A couple of weeks ago, I received an email inviting me to participate in a set of interviews for a story about how PLP cohorts help educators learn. Having just completed an exciting year participating in the PLP program lead by @snbeach and @willrich45, I was eager to participate.
I took a bit of time to check out Converge, an online publication and located education reporter and writer @reportertanya on Twitter and Linked In, then replied to the email indicating my interest. The next couple of emails exchanged covered some background information and arranging a time to connect via skype for the interview.
On interview day, we connected via skype at the appointed time, bridging California and Ontario, and had a 45 minute video discussion about my experience in the Ontario PLP program, what I felt my key learnings were and what our Board will be doing differently as a result of participating in the PLP project.
Congratulations to:
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson for designing and running the PLP program to provide an excellent training opportunity for educators, and
Tanya Roscorla for her excellent research and article – well done!
Enjoy the published article, Global Communities Rethink Learning at the Converge website.
After using my iPad for the last 6 weeks, thanks to @ron_mill, I thought I would share a few first impressions and some thinking about use in education. On the topic of first impressions, I note:
how much I enjoy using the touch screen interface – very easy to use
the context sensitivity of having the right options at the right time (such as a pop up keyboard) is amazing
the pop up keyboard is sized to allow for ‘traditional’ typing (not the fingering poking method)
battery life is amazing – I am getting 9 – 10 hours per charge.
the selection of quality apps is good
e-reader capabilities are strong
overall, lots of potential
the only drawback I have found to date, is that the wifi connection process seems a bit clunky as stored known networks do not always auto-connect
With all of these good qualities, I can’t help but think about the possibilities …. iPads for classrooms, staff development, library learning commons, moving the e-books agenda forward all would link nicely to our key initiatives.
Currently, the following iPad plans are in place for the 2010/2011 school year:
some will be available for staff to try at CATC Camp, our summer teacher PD session
a number of units will be available for use by elementary classroom teachers
iPads will be used in our secondary school Futures Forum project, developed as our PLP project
units will be purchased for our central elementary teacher librarian group for September
Other plans under discussion include:
iPads preloaded with staff development reading material that could be loaned out
~ Mark's Musings ~ blog.markwcarbone.ca 