Happy New Year

Enjoy your time off!

Next blog entry will be January 8th, 2012. Student created blogs will begin!

GenYES Recap

Thinking about the mission of SMHS GenYES, it is comprised of basically six areas:

1. Tech Support / Helping staff with computers, devices

2. Tech Integration / Class programs / Apps / Tech in classroom

3. Hardware Setup/ Labs maintenance / Repairs

4. Technology Expertise / Innovation / Being on the "Cutting Edge"

5. Leadership Skills / Mentoring others / Presentations

6. Collaboration / Learning from each other

PART 1 - Homework/Class Assignment complete by Friday

• Open your pvLearners and create a new shared document.
• Title it: GenYES Recap
• Assume you are the teacher (fat chance, just pretend!) for GenYES next year.
• Provide three solid paragraphs on how you would teach, improve or change GenYES. Refer to the items 1-6 listed above in your comments.

PART 2 - Blog entry. Put this answer in the comments below like you always do.

• Pick one of the items above (1-6) that you feel you excel in the most. I am curious to know what area of GenYES is most popular.

Thanks for a truly great year!

.. Ms K :)

Best of the Best

The end is near. The end of MsK writing the blog articles for this school year anyway!

It will be up to you from now on! This week, peruse all the archives of this blog. Any post that begins with an (S) is student written. Look over all the blog topics from the past few years.

Pick 3 blog topics that you thought most interesting and list them for this weeks blog.

Next weeks blog (and this week's classwork) will be to draft a blog article for this forum.

Details here.

Here are some websites to help you draft your blog articles:

Tech Sites

Tech Topics

Technology Blogged

Gizomondo Home World

Fast Company

Future technologies ... that already exist.

Last week we looked at proposed technologies that were in development. Some are farther along than we realize.

This week is about innovations that already exist. Some are mind boggling! Click the title link.

1. After watching the quick movie of all ten innovations, choose one and find a website with more information about it. Provide a shortlink of your findings. (10)

2. What interests you most about this innovation? (10)

3. Think big. If you could add one adaptation, improvement or change to the device, what would it be? No you can't say, the device is perfect the way it is. Think outside the box. Make a change and substantiate it. (30)

Yeah you probably guessed it ...the emphasis on this blog is question 3.

Numbers = (Point allocation)

Future Tech

In the spirit of Innovation and the holiday week... enjoy these websites.

This is your future.

Advance Future Technology

2057 Interactive

Future Transportation : Airbus

Future of Work / Productivity

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....

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?

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....

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....

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.

Innovation

                          What     is     innovation    ?