You down with AIC? Yeah you know me.

Keeping with the iPad topic, I'm going to try the Dragon app to speak this week's blog to see how well it does with converting my speech to text. I've read a lot this week about the popularity of the iPads for speech/vision/hearing impaired.

Jennifer Valentino-Devries' October 12 article in the Wall Street Journal stands out.

Since last Tuesday, the three AIC coaches have been busy, working with over 40 teachers in two after-school flex training sessions, and logging time 17 teachers during the work day, on topics including Google apps, Schoolwires, MOODLE, wikis, Word and PowerPoint 2007, collaborative writing and blogging, Voki, and the Podcasting topic we promoted at the in-service day.

After Monday's in-service for all teachers in grades 4 - 6, which we coaches helped plan, delivered the five concurrent breakout sessions (with the help of 7 other excellent faculty members and administrators), and ran the end-of-day collaborative work session, we took some time today to reflect on our work. The theme of the day was, "It's not about the technology; it's about learning powered by technology." At many points in the day, the technology played a crucial role, like when instructors of breakout sessions used Skype to bring their two groups together, from separate rooms in the building, for video chats. The tech took center stage in several breakout sessions, where facilitators modelled blogging, collaboration with wikis, and other specific web applications (Wallwisher, Google Forms, Quizlet, Voki, etc.), and demonstrated specific tools, like video cameras, Movie Maker, and the Elmo, to enhance the academic content. At other times, the technology took a back seat, where participants worked in groups to discuss and plan implementation and integration into their grade-level content. Of course, at certain times, the technology even limited our plans, like when presenters linked to sites that didn't funtion properly, or when facilitators had difficulty connecting to chat.

All in all, teachers were engaged with the ideas we shared, got to try a lot of the applications hands on, and we're extremely pleased (and even appeared in disbelief!) that they did not have to fill out a form to say what they did during their collaborative work time. This last part was very important to us on the planning team -- we wanted the teachers to have the time to work on what they were taking away, instead of worrying about what to tell us they were taking away. The exit ticket came on our end, as we traveled from group to group and recorded, with several flip cameras, each group telling us what they had gotten out of the day and what they planned to do with it in the classroom. We are working on combining that video into a webcast that can be shared with all who attended.

OK, that's enough from me for this Tuesday with Swindy. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for a What-up? Wednesday from Wendy and Jason.
:)