Readings Quotes and Comments

Week 2 Quotes

From Compliance to Commitment by Burns

“Not only did the scarcity of resources breed more collaboration within classrooms, it also yielded greater collaboration between classrooms as teachers started to leverage hardware resources across classrooms.”

What a great result! I think as teachers we are always feeling like there are not enough technology resources but this article and this quote remind us that as students work together and collaborate with limited resources, learning is taking place for the student and for the teacher!

From The Seven C’s of Learning by Richardson

“There’s a whole new world out there with a whole new set of skills that our kids need to learn to manage.”

This is the focus of CTE education on our campus and I believe across the state; “The 21st century learner”. It is our most important task, to prepare students to be successful, productive citizens in the next century and beyond.

From Document Management Tools by McLeod

“We academics tend to be document pack rats.”

How true! I wish I could get to the place where I had only electronic files and felt comfortable with that. I am beginning to do that with my personal documentation but I am only about halfway there!

From Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom by Prensky

“Change is the order of the day in our kids’ twenty-first-century lives.”

If we are going to be effective in the classroom with our students we have to embrace the idea of change and how quickly it happens and how easily our students adapt to changes.

From Assessing Your Assets by Holub

“The average school district looses more than $80,000 a year on lost or damaged IT assets..”

I experienced this first hand recently at my district when we got a virus that impacted the entire system. Since laptops had “deep freeze” on them they were not affected so they were doled out for daily use and when they were returned, batteries were on them, power cords were missing and half of them did not make it back to the carts for months! This is a perfect example of how IT assets are not used with respect for the cost of the tools.

The Case for Open Source by Guhlin

"A lack of standardization can also present a problem."

I have found that lots of the open sources are great tools they are difficult to manipulate, especially for students and with time constraints that sometimes forces students to give up on using the open sources, at least during class time.

Real Projects in a Digital World by Boss & Krauss

"Technology is the hook we use to get kids into significant projects and to get communities into significantly wanting to support those projects."

At the high school level the hook is showing students how the technology opens a world to them. The hook is developing challenging projects that allow them to use technology to complete them!