Edina Digital Age Learning

Suzie Boss,  National faculty member from the Buck Institute, talked about the importance of innovation. Her background is PBL and writing/reporting as a member of the press. Innovation is a big topic lately. How can we bring innovation to schools? Is peanut butter pop-tarts innovation? Who are the innovators? Ghana library similar to the Carnegie Library. Empty Space with people deciding what goes in there. Kickstarter funded. D-Rev High performance knee replacement. Studio H Public High School “Design, Build, Transform” curriculum. The community donated the land, and the high school students in North Carolina developed a High School for them. Maker Fair Maker spaces lately are great incubators of innovation. Thomas Edison's workshop had a pipe organ. You can't be thinking problem solving, 24/7! They used the organ to take breaks, and get refreshed. This made them idea factories! Where do our students get refreshed, to revive their innovation energy...

Ryan Cox at the Minnesota 1:1 Summit Ryan Cox , Director of Instructional Technology for Becker Public Schools , presented on "Rethinking Professional Development." His presentation notes are here . Cox shared his experience with his district becoming an Apple Distinguished School.  -Just because we're 1:1 and an Apple Distinguished School doesn't mean that we don't have problems/naysayers! Ryan shared an iTunes U course How to Lead Innovation: The Three Carriage Train .  "Focus and Simplify" is the montra he has followed, focusing on the "middle car" of those who are willing, but need some assistance to move foward. For him, that was Edmodo, Socrative, Showbe. They used the Apple Professional Development survey to see where their activities seem to be. For Cox, 90% were still at the substitution level of SAMR. He ran an Administrative Retreat looking at "starting with why," from Simon Sinek, looking at the vis...

The districts that participate in Project Blueprint shared the state of Tech in their district. I've highlighted what I think were the important points. Edina 3,210 desktops and laptops (PC now, but may support other soon.) LCD in each classroom Fiber, 1 gig between buildings 50 meg connection to the Internet. (Buying roughly 10 meg per year additional.) Network (IP phones, digital video) Wireless: 90% coverage at Secondary, 20% coverage at elementary Aligned to mission and vision of the district, promotes curriculum and instruction, encourages innovation Improve efficiencies and effectiveness in the delivery of technology services ITIL framework Providing access Allowing personal devices Student Centric Learning: Cloud based, Universal Design for Learning, Easy wireless access, Anytime-Anywhere learning opportunities, rich multi-media content. Clayton, MO 10 gig between the building 1 gig within 50 meg connection for 2500 students, but seeing that be tapped out. Looking at 100 meg...

Cool impromptu lunch session with Jeff Han regarding multi-touch screens and it's possible uses in education. Multi-touch increases accessability and allows the power-user to do much more. The bottle-neck now is how we interact. Multi-touch allows us to match bandwith with user. Uses: Information rich/graphical content Medical Imaging Energy markets CNN!! On elections, now ABC and Fox-Small part of the business, but large media coverage! The anchor in control of the information, not prepared by a producer ahead of time. The key to the success CNN had was John King's knowledge of the information he was looking for and his ability to use the tool! More engaging for the audience. Maybe the closest thing to how this might be useful to education. Parallels in the lessons learned in the media with education. The tech he's working on is having an impact on students. Study Math if you want to do this!!!! There's a lot of number crunching going on here! ...