Wi-Fi or...The bigger picture...

Reading an article this morning on wireless internet and how far it has come in the past few years with internet providers offering Wi-Max. Wi-fi is a basic at home wireless internet set up that has worked well for many people and will still in the future. But now they are introducing Wi-Max, a wireless internet service that will work for up to 30 miles. Wi-fi works at 150 ft indoors and 300 ft max outdoors. So now they're talking from going from feet to miles. What is something like that was introduced in Emmetsburg or even Palo Alto county. What would it be like when anyone with a laptop has the ability to go anywhere in the county and has internet service. Grant it, it is much more expensive the possibilities of having web access anywhere would be huge. What would we do with it? Well, anything you would like to. Listen to online radio, search Facebook, Twitter, and even MySpace, search Google or MSN, even watch videos across YouTube. All with no wireless and you could even be sitting in the park in the middle of the country side. But how would we pay for it? That is the question that still stands. Maybe something in the future we need to look at. One year from now, two, more? Guess we'll just wait and see.

Future of the schools...

I recently read an article about a workshop that took place in Iowa about the future of schools. The person who attended this workshop and wrote about it went on and told us about the four major subjects that discussed there:

• How are young people changing as a result of digital media?
• How should learning environments change?
• How should learning institutions change?
• What can we do with this back in my school organization?

So I'm wondering what is the future with Emmetsburg School District and how we will teach. They go on talking about whether or not teachers should be entertainers in education or not. So my question is, should teachers be more entertaining in the classrooms or still bore our students to death. I know that some teachers are very good at doing this and they do very well at keeping the students attention while others do still drill the materials them. I know that if I was still in school, I would want my teachers to be a little more entertaining in the classroom and keep my attention. Not saying that they need to sing and dance all day long but make it a little more exciting than just taking notes day in and day out.

So as I continued to read into this article he explained how they showed them three different schools that are educating in a complete different way. The first, Florida Virtual School, is a school of virtual learning that has developed its curriculum around online gaming. The second is Quest to Learn, and it's using online game. And then the third one, The School of One, has developed a model that blends the best of online instruction and face-to-face interactions.

So now the questions to ask yourself. Where is Emmetsburg heading with teaching? Where will we be in 10 year from now? And will they look anything like the schools above?

Guess we will find out in 2020?

Here is a short video of The School of One.

Program Overview from NYCDOE Teacher Development on Vimeo.

Resources found at 1:1 Schools.net

Copy from 1:1 Schools

I thought this might be a good post for someone to take a look at.

What do our students need to learn? Feedback wanted!

I frequently have conversations with educators about transforming schools. Our conversations often focus on how many of the things that are currently taught at schools aren't very relevant. So what should today's students learn?

As schools move to one to one, it presents a great opportunity for schools to address this question. I'm curious to hear your feedback about what things you think students should be learning. Hopefully, many of you can find a couple of minutes to contribute to this conversation. I've included some questions that might get you thinking.

Is it important for students to memorize things that they can find on an internet search in 5 seconds?

Do students need to know how to use cursive handwriting?

How much time should be spent memorizing math facts?

How much time should be devoted to teaching spelling?

How much time should be spent with factual recall?

Where on Bloom's Taxonomy should most learning take place?

Should schools give out computer?

Here's an interesting article, and resulting discussion, that hits on many important points that are relevant to our 1:1 vision at Emmetsburg. I'll hold off on responding for now. Discussion?

• http://link.social.com/c/twitter/1349941/1267641611/b/cl5WNw/9rhOB3

Linux Fedora 12

I just finished up reloading my Dell notebook with Fedora 12.3 and so far, I love it. It really works well compared to Windows XP. It takes a little bit to get used to but it is great. It installed everything for me so all I had to was install it. Got some great features that Windows doesn't but I'm still working on the bugs of getting them figured out.

1:1 Laptops

Here at Emmetsburg High School we are starting to talk about going with the 1:1 laptops. Which means we will provide a laptop for each student that is enrolled at Emmetsburg High School. We are just in the starting ages of this so nothing has been set in stone of what we will be doing for sure. Looking at getting notebooks so we would have a screen size of 13.3 inches or 14.1 inches. Nothing smaller or bigger will be purchased, so that our students have the mobility of a netbooks but the features of a laptop. Right now like I said, we are just in the early stages but planning has started. We are looking for different options with brands and policies.

As fast as a Pigeon

This is still my favorite post I have found, so I'm keeping it on here for people to look at. If you think your internet is slow, just go ahead and check out this link and read the article. I don't want to tell you about it so I don't ruin the surprise for you.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/090909/odds/odd_us_safrica_pigeon

Instructional Videos

I am still going to be working on some new instructional videos for them to help them with some things that they might run into with the Google Docs. They will be posted on our website so be looking for them under District, Technology, Instructional Videos. If they have questions or something they need help with they can email at mmueller@emmetsburg.k12.ia.us.