Local District 4 Instructional Technology News

Thank you to the Tech Coordinators that attended our meeting.  We had a great presentation from Art Rowles from Star Education Systems.  Art demonstrated several products including the Mimio, the ConVA Student Response clickers and the Avio iP-40SE LCD projector.

The Mimio is an inexpensive solution for schools interested in purchasing interactive boards.  For about $700, you can tun any existing whiteboard into an interactive board.  Plus, it is lightweight and can be easily moved from one room to another.

The ConVA clickers allow teachers to instantly get feedback from their students during a quiz.  No more need to print out a number of copies to distribute or spend hours trying to correct each quiz.  With the ConVA, students get instant results. It can also help teachers get a feel on how the class is doing during a lecture.  Unlike other clickers, you can have an unlimited amount of devices to one receiver.

The Avio projector is an LCD projector and document camera all in one.  But unlike a traditional document camera that has the camera above the document, this projector has the camera under the document.  It looks similar to a scanner. The picture quality is phenomenal, but there are a few drawbacks to this device.  If you want to annotate on your document, you will have to save the images to your computer first, then annotate using computer software rather than just writing on the document. It is also not cheap.  It will run you about $2,500 and is a bit bulky.  I could see this as a tool for meetings, but not for a classroom.

Apple Contract

This week the Board of Education will review the Apple contract.  If all goes well and it gets approved, schools will be able to purchase from Apple once again.  I don’t have the details to the contract, but word has it that schools will be getting better prices and better computers.

Computer Contract

The District has revised computer contracts to reflect a few changes.  All desktop computers will now be equipped with 2 GB or memory.  Laptops will still come with 1 GB of memory, but you can upgrade them to 2 GB.  If you are going to upgrade your laptops to 2 GB, ask for the upgrade when placing the order.  Otherwise, you will have to upgrade them yourself.

InfoTech 2009

Get those projects ready.  InfoTech will soon be here again.  The announcement has not been made official yet, but we are looking at early May.  More details to come.

Apple Remotes

Do you have a collection of Apple Remotes and can’t really do much with them?  The Apple Remote is intended to be used with iTunes, iDVD and Keynote. But what about using it with Power Point?  Unless you go out and buy a separate remote for about $80, the Apple Remote is not going to help you out.  That is where Mira comes in.  For about $15, you can hack the Apple Remote to work with just about any program on your computer.  I use it on my computer and it works great. Give it a try.

Technology Workshops

I am working with the Elementary Literacy an BTSA team in developing and offering technology workshops.  Some will be for salary points and others will be for those that just want to learn something new.  I have just finished a series on Data Driven Instruction using MS Excel.  I will be planning future workshops throughout the year and will post them on the Learning Zone  under the program, “Local District 4 Professional Development” for people to sign up.

Some of he workshops will be on Google Docs, SmartBoards, Digital photography, Internet Research and many more.  I’ll keep you posted and let you know when they are available.

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