Sunday, November 20, 2011

Future Tech

In the spirit of Innovation and the holiday week... enjoy these websites.
This is your future.






1. What new idea or future innovation impressed you the most? Why?

2. Think about this. You might let the future unfold in front of you or you can be part of the process. I believe you have the potential to be a very cool, future innovator. So dream a bit and project how you might be involved in developing and using one of these or other future technologies. Provide imaginative details....

Sunday, November 13, 2011


1. What is this?
2. Do you use them?
3. If YES, how? If NO, why not?
4. How might they change the way we shop...bank...live?

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Leading Technology in High School

Considering the cool things we are doing with our Innovation Projects and the development of our AMPLITUDE concept, I thought it would be interesting to investigate what other high schools are doing and how we compare.  Here are some results of my search:




Research some of these schools.  (You will need to uncover the schools real websites)

Pick ONE high school that hasn't been selected by someone posting before you. 

1.  What list was the school on that you picked?  Why do you think it made one (or more) of these lists?  What can we learn from this school?

2.  Do you think there is anything we are doing technologically at our school that they are not doing?  What?  What gives you the impression they are not doing it?!

3.  How does Shadow compare to these schools in general and specifically to the school you picked?

4.  Do you think we should make one of these lists?   How do we get there?

5.  Random thought....

Sunday, October 23, 2011

AMPLITUDE :: Innovation Support

Innovation Extra ...

In honor of officially kicking off your innovation projects ... this week we will focus the blog assignment on that.

Convey what you are doing out side of class time to work on your projects.  Are you...  Meeting a teammate?  Researching? Attending a webinar?  Meeting with teachers?   Writing emails?   Writing notes on your webpage?

All you have to do this week is share what work you are doing on your project out side of class time.

That's it!  Now go do something project-ish....

Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Next Step


Innovation in Education!


As GenYES students and technology mentors, one of the most importance facets of your role is to be technology innovators.  Last week you explored the idea of innovation.  Now it's time to BE innovators!


So how do we do this? 


1.  Breeze through this document:  Up to the Challenge  (YIKES! It's 38 pages long! Are you CRAZY MsK?)  No! I just want you to get the feel for what the study* is talking about!  Read a few parts in the beginning.  Stop and look at some pages that get your attention.  Discover some critical skills needed for students (Like YOU!) to be successful.  Pause around pages 17 through 20ish and understand what we (GenYES'ers) are striving for as tech innovators.  Consider what we've built and are building. Why are we creating AMP Zones?  What are we doing with this Compass Lab?  Why did we buy a Promethean Board?  → Comment on points about what you read and how it affects what we are doing.   
Are you up for the challenge?


2. There may be things more important in education than memorization of facts.  After all, we have google for fact finding, right?  The new ideologies are: The 4 C's.   What are they?  






3.  The simple video above is analogous to the way we do classwork now and proposes the idea of discovering new approaches and ideas through ... innovation.  Think about how this movie applies to the classrooms of today and potentially tomorrow.  Be specific.  


4.  What is Compass 2015 about? 


5. In Shadow's part of Compass 2015 what Objective and Strategy are the Compass Lab and Amp Zones listed for this year?  (Listed as digital lab and Amplitude)  What other notes about 21st Century Learning does it say we are proposed to do? 


Note:  Yep this is a long blog assignment!  OK OK...it's worth 100 points AND you will have class time to work on these concepts this week!  
  
*study:  There are many, similar studies and significant data to support this thinking.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Innovation






                          What     is     innovation    ?











Sunday, October 2, 2011

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Australia!

This week, in honor of our Australian vistors, imagine that YOU are moving to Australia!

1. Pick a city in Australia to move to.
2. Pick a place to live in that city; apartment or house
3. Pick the high school that you will attend in the same city.

Provide a picture link (use Google Short links) and comment to each task. Look at my example and model it for your entry.

This is not an easy assignment and you will be discovering some unique skills in Internet searching for this type of information. It will be interesting to see who rises to the top in this challenge!

PS Let's vote on who finds the coolest place to live in Australia. Prize? Yes.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Leadership

Considering the philosophy of the GenYES organization; sound leadership plays a major role in the programs' success, from the local perspective of students acting as campus, technology ambassadors to running a world class company.

1. Explore this Leadership link. Choose one of the topics and fully investigate the properties of leadership. Give a summary of what you read.

2. What leadership strengths do you possess?

3. List some characteristics of being a leader that you feel you might need some improvement.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Google Apps

What are the best Google Apps? Find 3:

1) One for fun, chillaxin (did I really say that?)
2) One for education (use for school stuff)
3) One for productivity (organizational, study help, notes, etc)

Give a reason why you chose that app. Just a few words why it's the best. (This is easy, schmeasy homework huh?)

Oh yeah...you have PRESENTATIONS due this week!!