C4T #4

In the post, "Transition Years" on Dorothy Burt's blog Manaiakalani, talks about the Manaiakalani Schools being in their fourth year of ensuring all year 5 to 13 students own their own digital device. I wish Mobile County was like this! This enables them to participate in a digital learning environment. The leaders of the junior class brainstormed ways they would like to experiment with such as starting individual blogging younger (great idea!), use desktops and tablets, have an older buddy class, having a Chromebook pod available, etc. Two schools reported back on the positive difference the Chromebooks were having in class. The children were confident in logging onto their Google apps. What an awesome opportunity these kids are getting! My comment was, "My name is Lauren Macon and I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. Dr. Strange has assigned us to visit educator's blogs and to leave comments. The leaders of the junior class have brainstormed a list of great ideas! Blogging is something I want to do in my future elementary classroom. Having the older students help out the younger students is a great idea. I think it is exciting that young children are able to interact and use technology at such a young age. Children having confidence in technology is AWESOME! My first time blogging was this summer in EDM310. I never knew there was so much technology that could be used in a classroom. I enjoyed reading your blog and look forward to reading more!"

In the second post I commented on, "Next Step: ChromeBooks" Dorothy Burt talks about the positive user experience Manaiakalani Schools are getting from the use of ChromeBooks. Manaiakalani Schools ordered 700 of these spread across 11 schools and bought by children ages eight to eighteen years old. Wouldn't it be great if Mobile County had this opportunity? The students were included on the decision of switching to Chromebooks. They chose the Samsung 500 (WiFi only) model. She said the experience the children and teachers experience was delightful. She says, "That 8 minute boot, the ‘switch it on and it connects with the wifi and logs you into your account’, no fuss and start learning was such a pleasure to be part of." Six months later, she says the experience is still positive. I love this quote that she quoted by Adam Naor, "The Internet is the platform for learning." This is a great quote for EDM310. She also post some links to experience other teachers and students have shared. I commented, "I have never heard of a ChromeBook until your post! Interesting! Hopefully I will have the opportunity to use ChromeBooks in my future classroom. So exciting that there is such positive user experience."