Skills for Today’s Classroom

I’m working with a group of teachers that are trying out “BYOD” – Bring Your Own Device – in classrooms in Foothills School Division. We’ve learned a lot this year despite the devices being owned by Foothills and not by the students. We tried out Apple iPads, Windows Tablets and some Chromebooks. What we found was that, because they were first out of the gate, there has been a tremendous uptake with Google Edu.

Each teacher had a project as a part of their design work for using the devices and through it, the use of technology changed their teaching both in process and in outcomes.

We’re meeting later today and I’m hoping to get a chance to see how the use of the 33 Digital Skills exercise I’ve put together has changed because of their experiences. (Here’s a link to the skills description now down to a lean 20  and here’s a link to the exercise). It does a couple of things:

  1. Suggests PD for upcoming teacher sessions
  2. Is a measure of our move from consumer to creator.

We’re on hold to move forward on BYOD… still waiting on feedback from parents, etc. The cost of the device is becoming less of an issue as more and more technology is affordable .

I don’t usually add recommendations for vendors but the work I’ve been doing with Collin from BestBuy and Eldon from PCCorp has been more than admirable. Check them out.