Day one is in the books – and it was everything that I could have imagined and more. Over 220 teachers from every corner of the province, together in one place for the first time. David Warlick was rivoting, holding their attention for a full hour and a half…nobody budged for fear of missing something. He did his Literacy and Learning in the 21st Century presentation, focusing on how to develop the critical literacy skills for the next century.

The afternoon was also amazing – a good old fashioned poster session, but with a techno twist. Innovative teachers from all over the province who had something imaginative to share in the way of technology and learning set up in a ballroom at the hotel and shared, shared, shared. What an amazing group of teachers and ideas. I know I have many ideas flowing out of that for our schools next year.

Then, to top it all off, David joined me and my 35 pre-service teachers as he spoke to my ED4862 class at the University of New Brunswick. Needless to say, they gained more from David in an hour thatn they will get from me in 10 weeks. I was honored for David to volunteer his time and, judging from the student responses on their reflective blogs after class, they were floored!

Day two is up…in 20 minutes!

Technorati tags: Warlick, education, teaching, literacyandlearning

Spent the day today working with a few Grade 9 teachers – the front line of our province’s move to migrate the 1:1 laptop program from Middle Schools into the high school level. The discussion was pretty free-flowing…and somehow came around to a conversation about the ease of which- usually undersupervised – students wander away from what we want them to be doing into game sites or other random web diversions.

This has been a big discussion by some of the new 1:1 teachers at my middle school. For many, the task of managing yet another distraction – and an enticing one at that – is just too demanding. Their solution to wandering mouse clicks is simple – take away the laptop!

The high school teachers even seem to be more draconian, with policies in place that clearly spell out cut and dry rules for “cyber misconduct” that, for the most part, remove discretion from teachers. They argue that the ONLY way to manage student use of the laptops is to have strict rules in place, and that removal is the only effective means of discipline.
I have two issues with this…

1. Strict codes that demand strong responses from teachers and administrators often may not take into account any varying severity of “offences”, and sometimes handcuff teachers. There’s an old adage “Say what you mean, and mean what you say” …well…is this always really what we want to say?

2. I believe that removing a laptop – whether it be for a short period or permanently – is akin to removing a book or pencil. The laptop is a tool, and it’s removal should only be used as a course of last resort. It should not be used as a harsh tool for first offences. Thankfully, administrators at my middle school agree with me, and have forbidden the , until recently, common practice of using removal of a students laptop as a discipline practice. Instead, they see it as a clssroom management issue, and have placed the issue squarely back into the laps of teachers to develop solid classroom management practices and routines that address the issues inherent in the use of this new tool into the classroom.

Of course, it has now become a priority for me to work with teachers to develop some common practices. Suggestions?

Technorati tags: education, teaching, technology