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.

Riddle me this.

How do we overcome the resistance to students bringing their own technology into the classroom?
From parents, administrators and teachers.

Not what I needed.

So day three of conference and my laptop power converter died.
Just the little eepc box but the only one I brought in today.  There goes my "bring your own laptop" session.

ISTE day 2 end

Wow my feet hurt.

So I didn't make many of my workshops today in favor of seriously hitting the expo. I think I visited every stand and played with every interactive whiteboard solution there. Thoughts and views coming in a larger blog post which is in progress and will be completed when my brain works.

Interactive whiteboard options

So one of my goals of the conference was to compare a range of interactive whiteboard products. Let's consider the options I have seen so far:

The one we all want but will never get: Promethean 500 model. This is Promothean's entry to the touch sensitive world. Like most of the entries in this field it works on camera's mounted around the edge rather than relying on pressure sensors. It is a beautiful toy, allows multiple users at once and is a very solid bit of kit. Price tag is extremely high, although maybe not unsurprising as it only comes in the 87" and 95". CDW have them for just over $4k including the projector.

The one that felt it could have been just a little more exciting: Polyvision have a reasonable interactive set up. The board is designed to still function as a traditional whiteboard. Price tag is apparently around$15k (plus projector.) The board has a small texturing and the stylus has a built in camera that registers your location on the screen. Very much tied to the stylus sadly which I feel is a real limit on several of these options. The really clever bit with Polyvision was the magnetic control strip that can be relocated anywhere and as with most of the pen-based boards this year the pen works from about 30' away as a pointer. It also had a very nice chunky mini-slate to walk around with that was designed to attach to the board by magnets. Oh by the way, the board is metal and can have magnets put on it, just as an added kicker.

The surprise star: Hitachi's offering is the Starboard FX TRIO. This allows finger-touch control as well as a stylus and multi-user like most of its competitors. It also has two features that really sold it to me, the first is the gesture recognition: when you use one finger it take that as the mouse/pen, when you use two fingers it erases. I felt this was a very nice touch. Secondly the inteli-pen is a clever mode that not only corrects your drawings to geometric shapes and your writing to text. But it allows google searches based on what you have written, along with a range of other interesting functions. I also liked the relative ease with which it integrated with other windows running, dragging an image from google straight into the presentation and so on. Just visable and of special interest to most educators is their claim of a $999 price-tag, making it by far the most affordable of the newest range of boards.

The big letdown: A disappointing note was the relative lack of anything new from Smart-tech. They seemed to just be presenting the same tech with shinier accessories. Now while I love their accessories it felt like they were falling behind a little in the game.

The extreme overhype: Teamboard seemed interesting but it felt like they were mostly be plugging the software, the actual boards doing nothing the other available options did not. With one interesting exception. The latest board they pushing allows for levels of touch. So it senses how hard you are pressing on it. This allows for hovering which; especially for mac users, could be a really interesting option.

The basic: For sheer value QOMO take the prize, their IR boards seemed sturdy and effective with touch capability. A little over-simple and lacking in bells and whistles but very capable. Definetly worth checking out.


Ok, that's me for the night, tomorrow I will try and maintain my sanity long enough to talk about the myriad interactive projectors I have seen today.

So many techies

Some poor engineer just came to replace the led circuit that should make this glass table light up. Suddenly he had five tech bloggers mesmerized.