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.