How to Save Money by Migrating to Cloud Computing, Klint Finley

When Passion Drives Instruction No Child Is Left Behind, The Innovative  Educator

Thoughts on Teaching, 2001, Larry Cuban

Google Apps Gives Schools a Better “Walled Garden” for Student E-mail, RWW

The new social networking site is designed to help teachers create, organize and share lesson plans. Unlike traditional curriculum sharing websites, BetterLesson incorporates a unique curriculum organizing and filing system that enables teachers to easily create, store, and share information related to lessons they create.

According to BetterLesson, the product enables teachers to

1. organize and share their entire curriculum for a particular course,
2. easily connect and innovate with other educators,
3. tag and search lessons using state standards,
4. access files and instructional content from anywhere in the world,
5. utilize privacy settings to control who can access their curriculum,
6. easily identify high quality curriculum.

One of the interesting design elements of BetterLesson is its cloud computing infrastructure, which enables teachers to easily transfer information from one location to another. This is an exciting idea for teachers, who know firsthand how difficult it can be to easily store, quickly access, and share lesson plans with colleagues.

Another interesting aspect of BetterLesson is its social networking design. This unique design enables teachers to easily share and find high quality curriculum. The problem with many open source curriculum sharing platforms is they can be overwhelming and, often times, ineffective. Busy teachers don’t have time to search for hours to find a helpful lesson. The social networking design of BetterLesson enables teachers to build their own profiles, join groups and networks, and, most importantly, rank the quality of the lessons or curriculum they view. This means teachers can quickly find experienced teachers who design effective lessons and utilize them.

Although BetterLesson has been in private beta, the organization is currently working directly with schools throughout the United States to build curriculum and improve the effectiveness of the site. By summer 2010, BetterLesson hopes to fully launch the product by providing members with access to a content-rich site with first class teacher support.

Check out BetterLesson for yourself and let us know your thoughts.

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Cloud Computing

If schools are going to use technology to improve organizational processes, it’s important their leaders consider moving many of the school’s daily operations onto a cloud-based network. This enables the sort of communication that can only be accomplished by utilizing the  networking and information sharing power of a cloud system. I enjoyed a post on this topic from a few months ago, entitled “Heads in the Cloud.” The author discusses a few ways his school uses Google to communicate more effectively. Here are a few ideas I really liked:

1. Noticeboards– “[the author's school] no longer use a noticeboard in the staffroom as all staff log into our Google site from anywhere in the world and the first thing they see is our ‘virtual’ noticeboard and a staff calendar, which outlines what’s going on over the next few days.
   All staff can add events to the staff calendar or add announcements on the Virtual Noticeboard.  Although we are a small school, there are, on average, 4-5 announcements made each week.  These range from reminders about meetings to announcements about new resources.  Teachers often post up announcements that they have uploaded new resources to our resource sharing section.  The calendar also gets used for smaller events that don’t generally make it on to traditional staffroom noticeboards.  For example, people can see who’s gone on EPV days, if the principal (me) is at a meeting or if a psychologist is in.  Another cool feature of the “Announcements” section is the ability for staff to comment.  For example, last week I made an announcement on the site asking staff which week they would prefer parent-teacher meetings and gave a date to answer by.  50% of the staff left a comment on the site and the dates were chosen.”
2. Staff Meetings– “ ‘Will you stick x on the agenda please?’ is an often forgotten job, which can lead to disgruntled staff members.  In my school, if a staff member wants to add something to the staff meeting, we have a “live” agenda document which can be added to by anyone.  A few days before the meeting, the document is “closed” and the agenda is set.”
3. Learning Support– “I have found the “cloud” one of the best things for Learning Support.  One of my aims of Learning Support was to have weekly booster sessions for children who might not have grasped a concept during class, for whatever reason.  I wanted to free up a 15 minute session for 5 days so the support staff could teach that concept to get them back in the fold.  Sometimes a child doesn’t need a long period of Learning Support so this was ideal.  However, it would be almost impossible to manage without my cloud.If a teacher feels that a child (or small group of children) require a boost in a certain area of the curriculum, they can book a “catch-up session”.  This involves them filling out a simple form.  The Learning Support team then “grab” and book a particular session for a particular week.  The teacher can then, at a glance, see when their child will be given this session.  It works on a first come first served basis.  It’s working really really well in my school.
   Another cool thing for our Learning Support team is to have access to any of our assessment results.  Our Micra-T and Sigma-T results can be seen in a table so that we can pinpoint and prioritise who will be allocated Learning Support.”

If you are using cloud computing at your school, please share your ideas!

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A netbook according to Wikipedia is “… a category of small-sized, low-cost, light weight, lean function subnotebooks optimized for Internet access and core computing functions (e.g., word processing) — either directly from applications installed on the netbook itself or indirectly via cloud computing.

Most netbooks share these characteristics:

• light weight — 2-4 pounds
• small screen — 7-9 inches
• static memory instead of a hard drive
• mechanical keyboard, usually smaller than full-sized
• wireless Internet connectivity
• web-cam, microphone, and speaker
• USB ports and memory card slot
• price less than $400

–See Doug Johnson’s Tech Proof column, Netbooks and Computing in the Clouds.

Most netbooks come with a version of the Linux operating system and this can mean a bit of a learning curve for the user. However, several netbooks have recently been released with Windows XP. In addition, the small screen and often 800 x 600 resolution has been less than satisfactory.

One of the standouts in the netbook category is the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e. This netbook improves upon the general competition by offering Windows XP, a 10.1″ screen, and 1024 x 600 resolution, all for $299. This truly means that providing either students with their own netbook or a check-out cart for teachers to temporarily bring to their classroom is within the reach of most budgets.

For example, a set of twenty of these netbooks, along with wi-fi and a server to provide storage, can be set in place for less than $11,000. Furthermore, once the server and wi-fi are in place, the major cost is the purchase of more netbooks.

While the limited amount of, or no hard drive storage may seem to be a problem, the continuing growth of cloud computing (see Wikipedia’s definition) seems to provide the answer. Information is stored on servers and accessed via the Internet. Applications rather than being desktop based are generally browser based. This allows access of data at any location where an Internet connection is available (WI-FI or ethernet).

One of the best known and most often sited examples of cloud computing is Google Apps. Google Apps Education Edition is:

• 7.289117 GB / account of email, shared calendar, and collaboration tools right from the browser
• Free with no advertising for students, faculty and staff
• Ready to integrate with many APIs and use of Open Standards
• Add-on security and compliance tools available at a 66% educational discount
• Google Video for education.

Another example is Zoho an online office tools suite. Some of the common applications Zoho provides are:

• email and chat
• word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation
• online document storage and sharing tools
• wikis

Using either of the suites mentioned above would provide for a fairly robust learning process, both inside and outside of the traditional classroom walls.

Imagine, students could perform lab experiments and chart the results in a spreadsheet application, with the file stored online, all team members could contribute data and observations, at any location. During this phase, a wiki could be utilized to share further information, questions, and to work as a group to learn. The data could be summarized in an official scientific essay (English and Science skills), posted to the wiki for others to view and comment upon (Technology and communication skills), and finally presented in a short, powerful form (Presentation and Interpersonal skills), all while focusing on scientific method, reasoning, and experimentation. A powerful recipe for full purpose learning.

I look forward to your comments, suggestions, and ideas…