Wired Educator

One to One

My School, Perkins High School is taking its first steps towards one to one learning.  One to One is where every staff member and every student has their own laptop to use everyday both at school and at home.  I believe that this will be the greatest single investment in my school district’s future.  

Our first step starts this year with every teacher and administrator getting their laptops.  Next year we will start handing out laptops to our students.  I can’t wait!  In case you are wondering, the computers are leased and not bought.  This will help with the problem of what do do when it is time to replace them.  They are on a four year turn over and will be replaced every four years.  Not all of the details have been worked out yet but I can’t wait to get my macbook.  

For now I can’t wait to collaborate with my colleagues about teaching methods, and can’t wait to share apple computer apps with them.  I just think it is so powerful for students and teachers to get technology into their hands to use both at school and at home.  I won’t have to sign out labs, instead I will be able to just have students pull out their laptops and we can get to work on many things.

In case you are wondering, we are transitioning away from an all PC school so in the process we are handing out laptops for the time being with Boot Camp and Microsoft XP on them for slow adopters.  Not sure if I will ever use it.

Will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

Big Universe: A World of Online Children’s Books is an excellent website for educators and for the child in us all.  While this is article is primarily aimed at elementary educators, I believe we can all find some fun and use for this great site.

You are never too old for a good children’s book.  Even teaching middle shcool English there are a few times during the year I pull out a big picture book and share it with my students.  They chuckle and snort at first, but a  good book regardless of the genre makes an impact.  I am so happy to have stumbled upon the Big Universe Web site.

I’ve also always wanted to write a children’s book.  Now you can do both easily and for free at www.biguniverse.com.

Big Universe’s Web site allows you to read hundreds of children’s books for free, purchase children’s books, and even create your own children’s ebook complete with pictures using the Big Universe Author Tool.  You can see a demo of that tool on their site.

You can find out what new children’s books are out, read them, and read comments from others or leave your own. I really like that you can read the entire book, not just preview it. Sure, it is not as intimate as holding one in your hand and sharing it with a child, but I think this site is just great.

Using the online Big Universe Author Tool is very easy.  You can upload your own pictures or choose from one of the many libraries provided. The layout and writing format is also easy to use. You can even change the size of the book.  Once you have made your book, you can share it with the Big Universe online community, your students, child, or friends. You can also read creations by other Big Universe authors.

This website is doing so much right.  What a great find!  Please use it and pass this one along.

Here is another clever addition for our iPod in Every Classroom Initiative.

Talking Panda has created a slick application called iWriter that lets you easily create study tools for an iPod. Text and audio files can be placed on a 5th Generation iPod or iPod Nano.

iWriter’s format is similar to the layout of PowerPoint. You select from one of the eight templates and type or copy and paste the content you desire.  You can also create your own templates. You can even link it to an audio file on your iPod. The application provides a preview screen so you can see what you have designed. You can easily export it to your iPod. (Other export features are available. For example, .Mac Accounts, email, and other options.)

iWriter is available for both Mac and PC. The price in my opinion is steep at $29.95.  You can try a FREE 15 day trial to see if it is right for you before purchasing it. I like it for a nice way to not only get text on an iPod but also to create links within that text to actual audio content.

You can view a demonstration of iWriter in action here.

Wired Educator Recommendation: Go for the 15 day trial and bookmark the Web site it to see if the price drops.  Sorry, but $30 bucks is a deal breaker.