Developing a technology curriculum.

My school has no technology curriculum. As you can imagine this is a problem for me.

It’s not that my school doesn’t like technology; it’s more that we’ve fallen into a crack between two points. We know what we want and we know what we don’t want, but how do we get from one to the other?

We don’t want: A stand along technology class. Despite my thoughts that there are clear advantages to this it is widely seen as a thing of the past. Personally I can see a place for it in a supporting role to technology being present and prevalent throughout, but the danger is that it inevitably becomes a way to exile technology out of the classroom.

What we do want: Technology integrated into all aspects of the school curriculum. The tech is in place both to help support the learning going on within those subjects and towards the goals of the subject specific curriculum and to develop the technology skills of the students. This will all come together throughout their time from pre-K to high school graduation to create confident and adept users ready for the 21^st century.

What we’ve got: We’ve ditched that awful technology class, and relied that technology would magically happen within every class in an organized manner and the students would holistically learn everything they needed. It’s piece-meal and disorganized.

So here’s me and the technology team trying to put together something solid. We’re going to look at all the tech standards and everything we know and try and come up with a plan that runs through every grade and subject to develop our students.

Posts I should have made straight after ISTE but was too tired #1: Interactive Projectors.

OK a little late but I have been moving house (the day after the conference) and settling in. Here goes, the promised rundown of interactive projectors.

The sudden leap in interactive projector technology has been really impressive and is an amazing opportunity for schools if they are not bothered about some of the shinier aspects of the IWB technology. You won't get touch sensitive, but you will get some pretty exciting stuff for a lot less cost. These are ideal for schools that don't have existing projectors (for the compromise options when schools have projectors but don't want to put in IWB's I will write on those soon.)

The best example: The Epson Brightlink was the first of these I saw and probably the best example of what they do. It costs a little more than a standard ultra-short throw projector, but only by a couple of hundred. This allows you to turn an existing whiteboard into an interactive device without major fitting. Using a stylus it allows interactive features and seemed nice a crisp. Good value and a good range of things it could do. If you don't want touch screen and shiny tricks, this does the job nicely.

The one with the fun features: Optoma took their ideas one step further by giving it something like the Hitachi "smartpen" options. Their projector will convert handwriting to text, etc. Only a few of the features of most new IWB's, but enough to make their projector stand out a little. Sadly the stylus felt a little flimsy, but generally a nice product.

Neat trick, no shiny: BenQ had a nice trick, rigging a bunch of their projectors to make a 12" wide screen, this looked great but was obviously very pricey. On closer examination their actual individual boxes were not very exciting.

The biggest letdown: Dell's entry to this market has been hailed in many circles as a game-changer. But what I found when playing with it was a lack of crisp graphics, a seriously flimsy feeling stylus and a lack of precision when pointing. Their only real claim to fame was the range you could use the stylus at, but I didn't feel this was greatly important.

Hitachi's entry was solid, if unexciting compared to their boards. It had many of the tricks the boards manage, but not the wow factor. Again the stylus felt fragile and the precision was a little poor.

The one we all wanted but are unlikely to get: Boxlight's projector was phenomenal. Seriously nice. The crispest precision I have seen and the strongest projector. Their stylus was solid and lovely; their features many and awesome. Sadly the price tag was almost twice their competition. I entered a raffle for one hopefully, but I figure this is the only way I will ever get my hands on one.