MAC SIGHTINGS!

The latest shipment of Macbooks have arrived and will be delivered to the Apple Core Schools within the next week for those schools who need additional laptops for fulltime teachers. Please be sure to inventory these with care and bring your new teachers up to your school standard for using the new technology.



Professional development reports continue to be positive with even our most reluctant users! On March 13 we will be sharing the status and progress of Professional Development in each of our Apple Core Schools. Please bring your updated PDP with you to share with others. We will also develop our next steps for exanding our blogs. Please be prepared to navigate the group through your blog.



Lastly, the Schultz Center for Teaching an Learning will be offering some Tuesday Technology training after school for any interested user. I will forward an invitation to you so you can share with your team if they are interested.

Keep up the great work.

BLOGGING BEGINNINGS!

Our Apple Core Team has begun using blogs as a way of sharing professional development and lessons learned. We have posted the first of these blogs to provide access for our Apple Core learning community to begin reading regularly to learn from each other. Keep in mind that these are our first blogs and we are growing as bloggers. Just like reading makes one a better reader, so does blogging make one a better blogger.

Check out these new blogs from our Apple Core Team:
http://themacisback.blogspot.com/ This San Pablo Elementary's Blog
http://crownpointtech.blogspot.com/ This is Crown Point Elementary's Blog
http://tomlinsonk.blogspot.com/ This is Chimney Lakes Elementary's Blog.
http://www.celebrateeachday.blogspot.com/ This is Alimacani's Elementary's Blog
http://beaucleru.blogspot.com

Academic Leadership Team Schools of the Future Posibilities

Welcome to DCPS Schools of the Future Possibilities!

To help us understand our customer, the Digital Native, that enters our classroom each day, we thought the best way to enter their world was through digital media. From email, to text messaging, to blogging, to MySpace and Facebook, to online learning, this is the world that our students are growing up in and changing the way they learn. The latest brain research shows that brains of digital natives are developing and responding differently than the brains of digital immigrants and even some of us digital dinosaurs! This research strongly suggests that we rethink the way we engage, empower and educate our students for life in a digital world and world market place.

Our Brain:
1. Is wired for visuals
2. Responds to positive emotions
3. Responds to patterns-connects to prior knowledge
4. Responds to conversation-brain is a social entitiy.
5. Responds to things that are out of the ordinary
Ultimately, our brains remember what we care about, when you feel something.

1. Now click here to learn about Web 2.0
www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20html
2. Now open Attachment 1: School of Future for DCPS ALT Jan 29.ppt and follow along.bb

3. New Communication Tools:

Blogs: http://duvalappleseeds.blogspot.com
District communication tool about Apple Computer rollout

http://dreamleader.blogspot.com
Principal communication with faculty

http://coachingchronicals.blogspot.com
School Standards Coach professional learning community

http://mrsrossclass.blogspot.com
Teacher Communication about instructional lessons and strategies for teacher and parents

http://mallonmessages.blogspot.com
Teacher Communication for parents about their child's classroom experiences

4. New Collaboration Tools:

Ning: http://classroom20.ning.com
The Flat classroom--Social Networking-professional learning community around a topic

Online Collaboration: www.mebeam.com
Meeting space for teachers to discuss a topic via webcam

5. New Content Tools:

Digital Storytelling: www.voicethread.com
Audio presentations by student and/or teachers

Professional Development:
www.danpink.com
Professional reading and reactions

http://timmonstimes.blogspot.com
Look into Kindergarten Classroom in an ACDS school

Gabcast: http://onceuponatime.blogspot.com/2007/12/wanna-gab.html
Podcast that can be recorded by cell phone from any remote location

Youtube/TeacherTube http://www.youtube.com
Features videos to enhance student achievement
Video Tutorials for all subjects

Podcasts: http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/radio/
Podcasts of instructional lessons from students and teachers.

http://livefromthecreek.blogspot.com
Features real time posts about conference learnings for teachers


6. Attachment 2: School of the Future Review

7. Attachment 3 AAA High School THeme

8. Attachment 4: SOF Purpose

9. Feedback: Please provide your feedback at http://duvalappleseeds.com
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Docks, Dongles, and Drivers!

APPLE/MAC training for our APPLE CORE Principals and STCs continued in December with "Meet the MAC" training featuring a basic introduction to their new hardware features such as their "Dock" of tools, the "Dongle" to present videos from the video projector and a "Driver" which is their remote tool for moving their presentations from anywhere in the room.

This new community of learners has begun the process of transition from the PC to the new MACBOOK which is expected to empower principals and teachers to create more engaging presentations and learning experiences. New technology vocabulary was our initial challenge as we learned about Widgets, Safari, Firefox,Twittering, Blogging, Flip video, and Dongles. Then we built our own personal dashboards using widgets. This was just the beginning of our new vocabulary experience!

We also visited APPLE Interchange for online tutorial help and valuable information. Check it out at this link. http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali

The APPLE CORE STCs joined us for Tier 2 training! We saw the attached video about our Digital World, learned new student vocabulary such as L2M, POS and TAW! Ask a digital native if you don't know these new "words".

We also learned about APPLE/MAC features of:
voice over to read aloud to students, stickies as task lists, Mousepose'2 for highlighting text in presentations, and how to create a playlist and burn a DVD.

This new OS has been engaging and empowering as we learn to educate first ourselves and next our students. Stay tuned for an update of the progress being made at individual schools.



http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=24614047307834794&postID=4076743713644839657

HO! HO! HO! Macbooks are Coming!

Apple Core Schools will be receiving their teacher Macbooks the weeks of December 3 and December 10! A firm schedule will be emailed to each School Technology Lead. School Technology Leads should receive hardware and have an internal process for assigning laptops to teachers.

It is critical that each School Technology Lead have a professional development plan of action. These PDPs should be sent to Terri and Dana by December 14. We will review them and help you make adjustments if necessary for a successful implementation. We will then post all PDPs on our blog so that we can learn from each other's experience.

We invite all APPLE CORE team members to begin blogging their experiences with us so that we can develop our virtual learning community. For those of you interested in learning to build your own blogs, email stahlmant@dreamsbeginhere.org to sign up for a two hour class with an exerienced blogger in January.

APPLE CORE PRINCIPAL TRAINING

Principal training is scheduled for December 10 and 11! Apple Core Principals should bring their new Macbooks to training at the Schultz Center for two fabulous days of exploration and creation! Be prepared for creating your school story in keynote complete with pictures. building iphoto albums of special school events, creatimg new and engaging newsletters, and even learning to make music with garageband! This new tool will empower principals to publish their thinking in quick, easy and innovative ways that will "wow" your readers. Mark your calendars and leave your cell phones at home! You are about to have the adventure of the year.

Apple Seeds Planted

Duval County Public Schools first "Apple Core" Cohort has taken root with the induction of new APPLE/MAC technology! Fourteen elementary schools are being retrofited with new power, wiring, hardware, software and applied professional development to engage, empower and educate the digital natives that enter our classrooms each day. This new cohort of teachers and administrators are learning to use their new Macbooks to enhance instructional delivery and impact through the ilife suite of software. After four days of professional development, participants including the CTO, were deployed to experiment with iphoto, imovie, garageband, idvd, keynote, and other publishing tools. This group of technology learning leaders will be responsible for building internal capacity at their work locations with a transfer of skills and knowledge to student engagement by the opening of the 2008 school year.

This initative is a new way of deploying schools for Duval County as we introduced the hardware and software before we completed the infrastructure work of pulling wires, adding power, installing servers, etc. This new deployment method gives us the advantage of a year of professional development on a new platform while weaning our users from their old hardware. The beauty of the Mac OSX is that our users will now have the capacity to be "bilingual" in two operating systems.

When the full deploment is complete over 12,500 students will be provided access to cutting edge technology solutions allowing them to "connect" to the global learning community of resources and social networking. The potential to change the way we engage students in learning is limitless.