Edina Digital Age Learning

Edina Public Schools is now starting year three of our eLearning2 Digital Age Learning initiative .  We began giving students the option to bring their own device for their learning during the 2010 school year; we saw slow growth the first two years. At that time, the program was called "Go Wireless," and I chronicled our progress in posts here and here .  In December of 2012 the district joined a partnership with Best Buy to provide the services of a Web store for families, and Geek Squad support for student devices two days a week in each of the three secondary schools. In return, families would see a significant discount on the price of the device when they checked out. For the last two years, we saw roughly 60% of our families in the grade levels eligible take advantage of this opportunity, and students would then bring a device for their learning. In addition, the district provided a Chromebook computer to all families of need. This partnership...

Molly Schroeder welcomed participants to the Minnesota Google Summit , talking about some of the philosophies of Google that we can take to with us into the classroom. Launch early and iterate.  Providing "permissionless innovation!"  We all should be in beta Jim Sill , a Google Certified Teacher and Apple Distinguished Educator, kicked off the conference talking about "The World of Wild and Reckless Creativity." He talked first about growing up in the '80s, with MTV and Madonna, and "living in a material world." What world do we live in today? We live in a Twitter World #thisisnotasubtweet We live in an Instagram World  #selfies (There's a limitation...how many toilets show up?) There is a lot of self-branding, whether people know it or not! We live in a YouTube World  (Over 1 Billion views of Gagnam Style!) We live in a GoPro World   Then he asked the audience, " What World Do You Live In? " Here are some of t...

Molly Schroeder at Superhero 12 My colleague, Molly Schroede r led this session on  "What Will Learning Look Like in 2017?" We began attempting to individually answer questions on the Google Doc about what learning might look like . In her experience as a Google Certified Teacher, she has visited many Google offices, and has seen many different cool work environments. In fact, at Google, they recognize that work does not have to always happen at "your desk." She recently had the opportunity to visit Albany Senior High School in Auckland, New Zealand. The school opened recently  with the philosophy that learning is an active 2-way process. Learning spaces today need to be flexible. We saw that here at the conference, where people gathered to share ideas. Albany has windows and spaces that connect the inside to the outside community.  The space is open and shared. They don't have bells, because they don't want to signify that learning has a beginni...