Lausanne Laptop Institute -- Day 3

Today’s keynote was by Dave Berque from DePauw University and his subject was “Pen-Based Computing: An Emerging Technology with Pedagogical Promise” This is another keynote that I want to back to when the talk is posted on the website. Mr. Berque presented many convincing examples of how pen-based computers – especially tablet PCs – are going to offer far more interactive and creative work on the computers by students. He provided some examples, one of which is a program he either wrote or was closely involved in as it was developed. The program is called DyKnow and the little that I saw about it in his talk, it sure does sound like something worth investigating. For example, it seems to offer many of the interactive tools that Mr. Berque obviously values (he was fairly brutal in his criticism of PowerPoint as a presentation tool, sure, but a very passive, non-interactive one). DyKnow offers products that have the interactive power that Dr. Berque talked about as well as another that helps supervise and control student access (similar to Classroom Secure, apparently). I don’t know about the price – and, frankly, I’m not that knowledgeable yet about what all DyKnow can do – but I do think this is something to look into. All in all, Dave’s keynote was another stimulating talk. It certainly piques interest in what the Tablet PC might offer in the classroom.

Session I today was “Blogging Can Enhance the Learning Environment” and the presenter was Gail Braddock. Gail’s presentation was really an advocacy of using one particular blogging service: Blogmeister (http://classblogmeister.com). One reason is that Blogmeister is the idea and initiative of David Warlick who is a dedicated educator and technology advocate. She had us set up a Blogmeister account for our school. The case she made for the educational use of blogs was somewhat focused on the difficult-to-deny fact that blogs are getting much attention these days. Just a bit of “they are the rage, so they must be good!” Gail called attention to resource materials by people other than David Warlick who are very involved in the educational use of blogs such as Anne Davis (http://anne.teachesme.com/) including Ms. Davis’ “Think Abouts” (http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2004/10/000182.php). A later presentation included more positives about blogging but came out strong for a service such as TypePad (which costs something like $149 per year for unlimited blogs) rather than Blogeister, though the latter is free. Another person she recommended who is quite involved in the realm of blogging in schools is Will Richardson and his Weblogg-ed website (http://www.weblogg-ed.com/about).

Session II, presented by Tom Daccord – Noble & Greenough School, was next. Tom’s position at Nobles is “Academic Technology Advocate” and a number of people seemed to recognized the appropriateness of this moniker…..it acknowledges what a number of us do. His talk was called “The Effective Laptop Teacher: Tools, Strategies & Lessons.

Tom began with a series of recommendations that we quite practical and in the realm of what some of us might consider “common sense.” His advice to us, as we consider working in a laptop classroom, included such things as 1) think about your “strategies for minimizing distraction” among your students (or yourself!); 2) make sure the plug-ins and add-ins you need for your materials and web resources; and 3) projector placement and control. He went on to talk about some laptop integration strategies including such good ideas as making sure you come up “authentic tasks and complex inquiry,” “interactive learning,” and “constructive learning.” Tom advocated the use of online chats for encouraging (and capturing) classroom discussion (Tom has a set of criteria to maintain the proper tone and focus of chats that all students must conform to). He also spent some time talking about his use of blogs, especially advocating TypePad as a method of creating and hosting blogs and having each student have his/her own. Tom has a major web presence with his Best of History Websites portal (http://www.besthistorysites.net/index.html) and Center for Teaching History With Technology (http://thwt.org/).

The first session of the afternoon was called “The Road To Technology Integration.” Presenters were Cathy Kyle and Martha Turner, both of whom teach at Presbyterian Day School in Memphis. Although not without interest, this was mostly a retelling of the process of setting technology goals and strategies – including a multi-year technology plan. It was good to hear how some of their plans were actually accomplished sooner (rather than later) than planned. PDS is a day school for about 573 boys, starting with pre-schools to 6^th grade. The have a take-home laptop program for 6^th graders (school-owned machines) with carts of laptops for 5^th grade and below. The presentation followed the line from roughly 1995 ‘til now. Cathy showed us the various stages and put some focus on the additions they were able to make to their staffing (e.g. they have built up to the point where they now have three people devoted to curricular integration). It sounds like PDS has a successful program.

The final session for me today was “SmartBoards in the Math Classroom” presented by Thaddeus Wert, a math teacher (and department head) at Harpeth Hall School which is a “college preparatory school for girls grades 5-12” (http://www.harpethhall.org/). He gave a good (and convincing) presentation about how to use a SmartBoard. He had not touched a SmartBoard a year ago but saw a workshop about SmartBoards a year ago (at Lausanne, by the way), convinced his school to put them all the Math rooms and has not really looked back. Strong interest in SmartBoards has spread to teachers in other departments, so more will be installed at Harpeth Hall school in the coming year. Tad also showed some tools for using a virtual Texas Instruments calculator on-screen and Geometer’s Sketchpad. I haven’t looked at the contents of the CD he passed out but it apparently contains some useful (and free, I think) programs he recommends. (The projector went out a couple times during the presentation to due to an incredible lightning and rain storm going on outside. The bus ride back was amazing as we wove our way around [and sometimes through] lakes of water in the roadway and many, many cars backed up all over the place. Quite a dramatic gullywasher!)