Tuesday, February 7, 2012

A Day of Encouragement/A Day of Frustration

What would your ideal classroom look like? Would it consist of several work stations? Maybe a full laptop cart? Would you like a closet full of iPads? What if we threw in a few iPod Touches? Obviously there would be WiFi access and an interactive whiteboard to top it off.

I discovered that classroom today - sitting empty.

It was frustrating. Here sat an ideal classroom environment geared for exploration, collaboration, and research going to waste. Unfortunately, those in charge focused on developing a fully integrated classroom without focusing on the classroom. And there sat their ideal classroom - empty.

The day was not a total loss though. Although the computer lab set relatively empty, there was a steady stream of teachers stopping in to ask questions, learn more about this or that, share what they have done with their classes, and discuss what they could do with their classes. We experimented with Moodle, took a look at Edmodo, and shared several lists of apps that we could install on those iPads sitting in the close.

So how do we get these teachers into the computer lab? How do we take their ideas and bring them to life? They obviously had all the tools in place, so what was missing? Why wasn't the lab being used?

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