THE
GREAT MAINE LAPTOP EXPERIMENT
Chris
Toy, Principal
Freeport (ME) Middle School
Maine is undertaking a bold experiment. The goal: Put Apple iBooks in the hands of every middle schooler across the state. In September, the first wave of 17,000 laptops were distributed to 7th-graders at 239 schools, including Freeport Middle School, where MiddleWeb diarist Chris Toy is principal. A strong proponent of Maine's Learning Technology Initiative, Chris will chronicle the laptop adventure for us.
Laptop
Diary #4
Goodbye,
Overheads.
Hello, Powerpoint!
Last Thursday was the annual conference of the Maine Association for Middle Level Education. As usual a wide variety of sessions were offered, ranging from discussions of middle level sports and meeting the State of Maine Learning Results to ideas for involving parents in middle schools. A significant difference this year was the presence of the Apple iBooks and the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.
In one of the larger meeting rooms, Apple Computer had set up over 20 iBooks for teachers to explore. The Apple folks provided conference attendees with several opportunities for hands-on learning experiences with the latest Macintosh operating system and worked with small groups of teachers on how to create classroom videos using iMovie, one of the programs that comes bundled with the software in the iBook. I attended a session on the Mac OS X. After the session I felt much more comfortable with Apple's new system software and decided to upgrade. As a bonus the facilitator told us to watch our email because in a week or so Apple would be announcing a program that would provide all educators with a free copy of their newest version of OS X (10.2, a.k.a. Jaguar). Apple seems to be doing it right as far as this project goes!Venturing out on the technology limb
This conference was a pretty big step for me as well. I generally do a couple presentations each year. To prepare I use my computer to update my overheads and handouts. I then print out a set of overheads and enough copies to use as handouts. This year I put the presentation on Powerpoint.
I've been impressed with the quality of our 7th and 8th graders' Powerpoint presentations for their classes. I decided to venture out on that limb myself. I watched their teachers and our computer coordinator, asked a few questions, and got started.
Of course it took me more time than simply updating my old overheads, but the results were well worth the effort. I found that creating the Powerpoint slides really engaged me in thinking through my presentation. Planning, arranging, and animating the cards really engaged my mind much more actively than even word processing had, and this didn't even include the possibilities of sound and video.
An added bonus was that I could send the whole presentation to a colleague for review and feedback via email. I receive the feedback within 24 hours and made a few changes. Then it was ready to go. But that's not all.
A week before the conference I was asked to facilitate a discussion about middle school sports and cocurricular activities, one of the chapters in the upcoming report of Maine's Commission on Middle Level Education. Being a member of the commission, I agreed to help out.
Two days before the conference I received via email a working draft of the document to use as a handout for discussion. I copied and pasted into a document and then reformatted it into a handout, but I didn't feel ready or organized to facilitate a discussion.
The evening before the conference I arrived a bit early and decided to see if I could prepare a Powerpoint presentation outlining the chapter for the next day. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my progress the second time was much faster.
I kept it simple, using a format similar to my first presentation. Again I found that creating the presentation slides helped me organize my thoughts. I don't know if it was the slides, the topic, the participants, or the fact that I was organized and relaxed, but the sessions went very well with lots of thoughtful participation by everyone.
My experience with using technology as a tool definitely supports my observations that technology can help students to be more engaged in learning that is meaningful, skilled, and fun!
