This has been a busy week for me, as you may have guessed from the lack of posts since Monday. Wednesday was particularly busy… the day started with my first workshop at Salem Lutheran School in Orange. They’ve been gearing up for a 1-to-1 implementation where every faculty member and student would have a new MacBook. They were initially planning to launch the full program in the fall, but have thankfully decided to slow down a bit. Teachers just received their MacBooks and the technical staff are installing new X-serves this week. Next year they will have several rolling carts with mobile MacBook labs so teachers can begin developing lessons, and there may be some pilot 1-to-1 classrooms in the second semester. I’m lucky enough to be involved as a consultant (and professional developer), so naturally I created a wiki to support the program:
http://salemorange.wikispaces.com/
There isn’t much there yet other than a typical workshop outline (complete with hotlinks… and lots of references to Pamela Livingston’s new book, 1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work). I organized the rest of the wiki based on the California Tech Planning framework, so there’s sections for curriculum, professional development, infrastructure, funding, and evaluation. Despite the fact that it’s mostly empty right now, there was some cool wiki-ness happening Wednesday. I did the old “best hopes, worst fears” activity on a wiki for the first time, and we did an “in class” discussion on the wiki. The staff created a wish list already in the funding section, and we posted the results of a quick initial teacher attitude survey in the evaluation section. We haven’t moved the FAQ’s over yet, but here are the (slightly out of date) FAQs from their main website if you interested.
This is the beginning of an exciting new journey for the Salem teachers, Greg Busch (their IT support), Tim Surridge (their Ed Tech coordinator), and Phil Duerr (their principal)… and for me. :)