Creating Collaborative Classrooms

2009: A Year In Review

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

As the year comes to an end, I believe it's important to look at all of the great things that occurred in the past 12 months for DyKnow, for our customers, and for education, in general.

Stimulus Money -- there was a lot of hype about extra dollars for educational technology and for keeping teachers in the classroom. A lot of that money has gone out to states and, hopefully, to individual schools and districts. Integrating technology in the classroom is important when trying to provide students with learning experience that promotes 21st century learning.
Netbooks -- These "mini-laptops" continue to be very desired by the k12 community. With these lower cost machines, large public districts are starting to implement 1:1 computing on a larger level. Teaching strategies are really starting to focus on the use of technology in the classroom.
Addition of numerous International Schools -- It seems that an endless number of International schools are embracing classroom technology at an astounding rate. Many are moving to a 1:1 computing program and are implementing DyKnow as a part of that program as well. We're glad to count them as customers and we love hearing about all of the great things they are doing (for example, when school is closed because of H1N1, classes continued to meet virtually with DyKnow).
The release of 5.2 -- it's amazing what our software can do and the enhancements get better every year (for example, the PowerPoint Plug-In). Here's a synopsis of what was new in 5.2...and there are a lot of things to look forward to in 2010 with 5.3. Three cheers to our development team!

These are just a few of the many highlights from 2009 -- I can't wait to see what 2010 brings!

Using DyKnow in a Large Lecture Hall

Wednesday, December 9, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

As I've mentioned before, it's important for us here at DyKnow to recognize educators for their outstanding teaching strategies and integration of classroom technology.

This month we're recognizing Dr. Jean Adams of York University (Ontario, Canada). I personally had the pleasure of working with Jean and her colleagues as they evaluated DyKnow to determine if the product would meet the needs of her and other business school classrooms. You can read her profile and why she is our Educator of the Month, but I want to discuss some of the specific uses of the software in her class.

Engaging Every Student with Content Transmission -- Jean has a very large lecture class of about 400 each semester. DyKnow facilitates engaging all of those students via the technology. Jean knows that each of her students receive the lecture notes and can type additional information while in class.

Working in Small Groups -- The small collaboration group feature was something Jean was very excited about when she first saw DyKnow. With a few clicks she is able to separate the class into smaller groups of her choosing. These students can work together even if they are not seated near each other. In a way, this emulates interactive whiteboard technology for the small groups. They now have a shared space to collaborate--and they can easily submit their work to Dr. Adams.

Submitting Work in Class -- Speaking of submitting work, the students use the submit panel feature to send their work (either as individuals or as groups) to Dr. Adams. It's then easy for her to determine if she wants to share those submissions with the class or review them afterward. If she selects to look at them afterward, she can mark them up and send them back to students with the click of one button.

PowerPoint Plug-In -- Jean was very excited to hear this fall that we now have a PowerPoint Plug-In. She is able to create all of her content, including polling questions, ahead of time. She can click one button to have it convert into a DyKnow file and is still able make changes once it's in DyKnow.

This is just a sampling of Dr. Adams favorite features in DyKnow (I'm sure she uses others, too).

How are students spending their time?

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

According to a recent survey, college "students are spending nearly 12 hours daily, on average, engaged with some type of media". I found this survey on the PRSA website. So half of a college student's life is spent using technology.

While this article doesn't go into detail regarding when these gadgets are used to engage with media, I'd almost bet cash-money that some of that time is during class.

Students are usin

g technology in the classroom -- sometimes as a distraction and sometimes for good purpose. The student could be surfing the web for classroom-related content, playing the "google jockey" perhaps. Maybe the instructor uses online classroom software, like an LMS, to post additional resources and homework questions. Students could be using their cell phones to send answers to polling questions via software for the classroom.

On the other hand, students could be playing FarmVille on Facebook or texting their friends about what happened at the weekend's big bash.

Whatever these students are doing, they are doing it with technology. Sooner than later, I believe more professors will embrace technology as a tool with purpose in education which will better help them engage and connect with their students.

**Photo from mediabistro.com**

Upcoming Webinar: The Noisy Classroom

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

Don't forget to register for our upcoming webinar: The Noisy Classroom: Using DyKnow software to encourage collaboration and discussion. It will be happening November 12 at 2:00 EST.

Our September Educator of the Month, Dr. Andrew French will lead the webinar and demonstrate how DyKnow software allows him to immediately evaluate student learning and adjust instruction based on understanding.

Dr. French uses Tablet PCs and our interactive teaching software to create a "noisy classroom."

Oh and don't forget you can always review previous webinars on integrating technology in the classroom on our webinar archive website.

DyKnow's activities at EDUCAUSE 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

Next week, I'll be heading to Denver, CO for EDUCAUSE 2009. EDUCAUSE seems to be (and perhaps it) one of the largest High Ed conferences in the US. DyKnow attends every year.

This year we have a bunch of activities:

Hands-on Classroom: Dr. Vince DiStasi, CIO and professor at Grove City College, will lead several sessions on implementing technology in the classroom. The session, called "Active Learning: Selecting Technology for Your Environment" will be held 4 times during the conference. Check out this page for more information.
Concurrent Session: Dr. Dave Berque, Computer Science Professor at DePauw University, will present "Using Audio and Ink Recordings, Tablet PCs and DyKnow to Maximize Class Time - Teaching Upside Down" on November 5th, 2009 from 2:20-3:10PM in Korbel Ballroom 2B.
DyKnow Booth #1210: We'll have education software demos that showcase our classroom management software as well as our curricular software which includes classroom response technology, classroom capture and collaboration tools.
HP Booth #1110: See how DyKnow software combines with HP hardware for innovative and reliable classroom technology solutions.

For more details on where we'll be, see this page. You can also get updates by following DyKnow on Twitter.

Webinar Overview: The "Academic" CIO: Building a Bridge to Faculty with an Instructional Technology Focus

Thursday, October 22, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

Today, Vince DiStasi, the CIO for Grove City College gave a webinar regarding integrating technology in the classroom in a meaningful way.

Here's an overview from my perspective. The first part focused on the hardware, infrastructure and why it's important to consider several perspectives.

Don't underestimate what you need for your network. Infrastructure is incredibly important. You'll need more bandwidth than what you initially expect.
Hardware that is reliable and quality is important to faculty. They won't want to create a meaningful classroom technology plan if the hardware won't consistently work for them.
Make sure there is enough work space for students (previously this meant actual work space, now that means enough screen real estate on their devices).
Applications supporting the classroom experience are important as well. Some are discipline specific; others will have campus agreements.
Students won't always use the tools if they have them. They must understand what they are and how they are used. For example, students use MS Word to take notes, because that's how they've always taken notes on a computer. Once OneNote is explained (more as a collection tool for gathering information, like note taking), they are more likely to use it.
Why a Tablet PC? A Tablet PC is "a laptop on steroids." It's particularly useful for when a pen/pencil is needed.

The second half of the presentation focused on DyKnow software.

With DyKnow, you're not asking faculty to change a lot about the way they teach. If they write, they write on a Tablet PC instead of a chalkboard.
If they like PowerPoint, they now have a PowerPoint Plug-In to use. They can use existing PowerPoint, create polling questions during prep time, keep animations, and even launch a DyKnow session from PowerPoint.
The DyKnow Suite has many layers -- like an onion.
It's a good tool because most students today are not good note takers -- DyKnow makes it easier for them to understand what is important. But the key is not to make them passive learners. There are interactive tools in DyKnow to ensure students are involved.
The software ensures that students are able to replay all of their notes after class. If a teacher records audio during class, that stays with the notes from class.
A very useful part of DyKnow is that it provides different ways to collect student work. There is no handing out and collecting paper. Everything is done in DyKnow. For example, a quiz is sent to students, collected upon completion, reviewed after class and the graded quiz is sent back to students electronically.
DyKnow is client/server, not peer-to-peer. So it allows student to connect from a distance. They have students in France take a class with students in PA. Students are paired up in a small group, even though they are not physically together.
Another way to collect feedback is through a poll. This way it is anonymous, but the results are there for the entire class to see.
There have to be pedagogical goals (engagements, problem introduction, challenge artifacts, etc) with any sort of activity implemented in DyKnow. Students will know if you are just giving them busy work.
The idea of collaborative note taking is powerful. Faculty determine how much information to give to the students.
What's important to the faculty? The finished product or the process the student took? Replay allows faculty to see the process that the student took.
If you are using small groups, you only have to grade the groups' submission once and it will send the graded paper back to all of the students in that group.

In closing, it's not just about the technology. The infrastructure has to be there and be reliable. In today's world, everything is about access and mobility. The true reason to use technology is to leverage the power to help meet the objectives of the classroom and the school.

My Thoughts on the DyKnow PowerPoint Add-In

Thursday, October 15, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

I'm sure you know by now that our interactive teaching software, DyKnow Vision, has a PowerPoint Add-In. I think this is a great tool, especially for educators who already use PowerPoint in their classes.

I'll be honest: I'm not a huge fan of PowerPoint. In my experience, PowerPoint wasn't used to necessarily make powerful points. It was used more to rehash everything I'd read about in the text. Often times, I was able to access the presentation beforehand with our school management software (an LMS to be exact). I'd print them out, and then take notes on the side with anything else the professor would say that seemed important.

Nothing to me in this situation was engaging or interactive. It was the teacher talking at us (that's right, I wrote "at") and us trying to write down as much as possible.

I do, however, like the PowerPoint Add-In for DyKnow. Why you may ask?

PowerPoint isn't the actual mode of presentation. It's DyKnow. And with DyKnow you get interaction, collaboration and, hopefully, some engagement during class.
The embedded polling tool is fantastic. Now, teachers can prepare questions for this student response tool while they prepare for class. With one click of a button the question for understand is sent out to the student computers for them to answer.
Clarity. Now, when you convert from PowerPoint to DyKnow all of the text, links and images remain "live." It's no longer a static image. Everything is edit-able and move-able. Which means more flexibility during class with last minute changes.

I'm sure as I use the new tool more often, I'll find even more reasons why I like it! Until then, go download the latest version of DyKnow and see what it can do for yourself!
Photo from friendbeef.com

The History of DyKnow

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

When talking with schools, I sometimes like to share the story of how our education software came to be. Often referred to as the "fire story," our software originated in the college classroom based on an experience by Dr. Dave Berque.

The story is written in the History section of the DyKnow website. You can even hear Dr. Berque explain the story himself by clicking on the video link. As the story goes, it seemed to Berque (after the fire) that technology could play a role. There should be some way to incorporate classroom technology so that both student and teacher would be able to concentrate on what was being taught and not just writing it all down.

Today we're known as DyKnow, but originally the software was referred to as DEBBIE. There are some similarities between DEBBIE and DyKnow -- check it out for yourself.

A webpage about Dr. Berque on DePauw University's website reminded me of this story (it's also where the picture of Dave Berque resides) and the importance it plays in our ongoing goal to enrich technology enhanced classrooms. See, we focused on the learning aspect of the classroom first. The classroom monitoring software came later.

H1N1 Contingency Planning with DyKnow

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

Many schools are formalizing plans for H1N1 contingency and pandemic planning. In this situation, online teaching software becomes important to keep learning viable. Even when students and faculty cannot physically be in the same location at the same time, there are technologies that would allow them to connect online.

For the schools who use DyKnow, making classroom activities happen at a distance should be no problem. In fact, DyKnow basically works the same if your students are physically present or in a different location.

The process for using DyKnow in this sort of situation is like this:

Communicate to your students when your virtual class will be taking place.
At the appropriate time, start your DyKnow session (Monitor will also work for online classroom management!) and have your students log-in just as they would if physically present.
All of the features of DyKnow will work just like the students were in the room.
You might consider running a Skype conference call for the audio. Utilize the classroom capture tool to make the audio portion available afterward.
With or without audio, take advantage of DyKnow's chat feature to have the students respond to questions.
Have students submit work with panel submission or work in small groups with work groups.

If getting together for a synchronous session isn't an option, utilize DyKnow's recorded audio and create your lesson in DyKnow. Both the content and the audio will be available to the students at their convenience.

It's our goal to make using DyKnow for this sort of situation an easy transition from the in-classroom experience. Here's an article about some of the tools, including DyKnow, a school in Mumbai has in their "tool kit" just in case.

1:1 computing and DyKnow at Cincinnati Country Day School (summary of today's webinar)

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

History of 1:1 program at CCDS:

In 1996, they were the first school to go 1:1 and did so by working with Toshiba and Microsoft.
In 2003 they started using Toshiba Tablet PCs in their program.
Now every student and teacher in 5th through 12th grade has a Tablet PC.
They have deployed Windows7 to about 200 computers and have been very happy with its performance.

Machines are used in the classroom and out. Every single person has a Tablet PC. Baker says that a laptop is a subset of the Tablet. Unlike many who say a Tablet is a laptop with a pen. It's NOT about converting handwriting to text -- it is about so much more.

His job is to create the most powerful teaching and learning environment available. It's not about the computer. It's about pedagogy. He has to make integrating technology in the classroom as easy as possible for both teachers and students. There is trust in the faculty they they understand what they want to do in their classroom. He's there to facilitate it.

How DyKnow changes the classroom (or at least how it did at CCDS):
Note taking -- for Rob, there are two camps of teachers:

Those who write as much as possible and expect the students to write all of that as well.
Those who use AV (videos, audio, etc) and aren't really engaging the students.

Rob, however, wants it all. DyKnow software helps him engage students in the learning process as well as give them the opportunity to be active learners (and note takers). He wants to know: Who knows what and when do they know it.

DyKnow focuses and motivates the students because they know that they may be asked to answer a question, submit their own work or share something with the class, at any time.
There are a number of features that Rob integrates with his teaching strategies to get the most out of class time:

At any time he can collect the students' work -- from one student or from the entire class.
He can see the process of how the student solved the problem. DyKnow automatically "records" each step that the student took so you can replay each student's work step-by-step.
It's easy to make a student the teacher so they have control to share their ink and text with the rest of the class. One student could lead class or several could be chosen to share the space at the same time. Rob equated this to giving every student interactive whiteboard technology.
For those who are familiar with clickers, DyKnow has a polling tool built in that can accomplish just about the same thing. Rob said that this is a nice way to see if the class understands the topic.
Students can be encouraged to work individually. The purple ink only appears on the projector so that he doesn't write over what the students have done.
Students can replay this information outside of class as well. If the lesson is recorded, students can listen to the audio as well.
The chat feature is useful as well. Rob even utilized this outside of the classroom when he had to be at home for the school day and his students were taking a test in class.
He uses the classroom management software, DyKnow Monitor, not just to keep students focused, but to be able to watch their screens in real-time.

A recording of the CCDS webinar will be on the DyKnow Video Library soon if you missed it!

Upcoming Webinar: One-to-One Computing and DyKnow Software

Tuesday, September 8, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

DyKnow is sponsoring a free webinar on September 15th at 2 pm EDT. Rob Baker, Technology Director at Cincinnati Country Day School (CCDS), will be leading the session which will discuss their 1:1 computing program and the importance of integrating technology in the classroom .

In particular, Rob will focus on CCDS's use of DyKnow software for a variety of classroom activities such as student responses and interactive whiteboard software. While I believe CCDS also uses the classroom management system, DyKnow Monitor, Baker will focus on engaging the students in active learning activities not the need to keep students on-task.

You can register for this webinar on the DyKnow website and also learn a bit more about Rob Baker as he was our June 2009 Educator of the Month.

I'm looking forward to learning more about classroom technology integration with the 1:1 Tablet PC program and how teacher's are utilizing the features of DyKnow Vision in their classroom.

DyKnow Software at Albion College

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

**Photo Credit: By J. Scott Park | Jackson Citizen Patriot

I really enjoy hearing how customers are using DyKnow in their classes. This article allowed me to do just that.

Albion College began using DyKnow software last fall after being awarded with HP's Teaching for Technology grant. Professor Andrew French determined that he wanted to integrate classroom software with his teaching strategies while using the Tablet PCs.

Claire Cummings of the Jackson City Patriot recently visited French's class where she learned how the interactive software is being used with students and how those students are reacting to it.

As the article indicates DyKnow has had some effect on classroom particpation and on improving test scores. This is a great example regarding our focus for the technology to enhance student learning and enhance the experience of teaching in a digital classroom.

K-3 students use DyKnow, too!

Thursday, August 20, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

While DyKnow is sometimes thought of as high school education software, the tool is designed to be flexible and adaptable to any classroom technology experience. Students from Kindergarten through professional programs are using the collaborative note taking software, albeit in a variety of ways.

This is a great video from the local NBC news affiliate in Atlanta, GA. They are featuring the students of King's Ridge Christian School and their use of DyKnow software in the classroom. The image is a bit small here, but you can always go directly to the 11Alive website for a larger video.

I really enjoyed this story. It helped me to understand that classroom technology integration can happen even with the youngest students. After all, these children are experiencing technology in their young lives often and it makes sense to expose them to computers in the classroom.

What's on your back to school shopping list?

Tuesday, August 18, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

Recently, I helped purchase back-to-school items for Back Pack Attack, an annual fundraiser for schools supplies. On the list of "wants" were typical supplies -- back packs, calculators, pens and pencils, folders, etc.

This lead me to wonder: What types of technology tools are are on student's back to school list?

I'd imagine that some are looking at computers for the classroom and various other forms of classroom technology. Graphing calculators were all the rage when I was in school. But I imagine that with more technology in the classroom comes more sophisticated tools for students to purchase and use.

I wonder, too, what would be on a teacher's "wish list" for his classroom. Perhaps more classroom technology resources (and more IT support) to help get it up and running. I'm sure they are considering various digital teaching tools to use with their tech-savvy students. Perhaps those who fear what their students are doing with that technology wish for classroom monitoring software.

Whatever it may be, that's on the required list or the wish list, I hope that this new school year gets off to a great start.

Infinite Possibilities-Tablets in the Math Classroom

Monday, July 20, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

This session is led by: Amy Scheer and Janet Purdy, Math teachers at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis, MO.

Session Description:
One-to-one computing in mathematics affords students and teachers a multitude of powerful options. Bundled with various software packages including OneNote, DyKnow, Fathom, Geogabra, Sketchpad, and Stella, we have been able to increase collaboration among students and promote individual exploration of mathematics concepts and modeling.
Use of Web 2.0 tools has increased collaboration outside of class. Technology has helped to make the learning process transparent and has deepened the teacher’s ability to assess student learning. This session will explore the use of scribe blogs to promote student reflection, implementation of a math research portfolio and the transformation of the daily teaching and learning of mathematics. We will discuss ways the curriculum has changed because of the infinite possibilities educational software tools provide.

As I've mentioned before, MICDS truly understands the importance of technology in the classroom. They first looked at 21st century skills in order to determine what educational tools they wanted to use while teaching with a Tablet PC in the digital classroom.

Blog -- post information and videos on the blog and ask students to make comments to the blog.

Jing -- from TechSmith, screen capture or a video. Make videos for your students or go over homework problems for students to review individually.

GeoGebra -- free; gives you the algebra equation that is associated with a shape that you draw on the screen. Can be exported as a webpage or an image.

Fathom -- does a good job of demonstrating a problem. For example, plotting points on a graph.

DyKnow -- what happens on the teacher's screen also happens on the students' screens. Private ink doesn't show up on the students' screens. Students do not see each others' work by default, but you can choose to share what a student has done. They also use DyKnow small group work, out-of-class review (they have used Skype to bring students who are not physically in the classroom into the lesson) and for status updates. They use Compendium BlogwareDyKnow Monitor as their classroom monitoring software to ensure that students are staying focused and on-task during instruction.

OneNote -- they use OneNote to combine the notes, images and information into one file for student review.
Copy problems from the online text book and then hand write the answers.

Many lessons include several of these classroom technology resources combine into one class session.

Top Tricks and Tips for Tech Trainers/Administrators

Monday, July 20, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

Connie White, Director of Technology & Media from Lakeview Academy in Gainesville, GA is presenting today on some of the best things they've found for integrating technology into the curriculum.

Session Description:
This session will highlight and provide instructions and examples of our favorite Web 2.0 tools, websites and applications that we have implemented or enhanced in the past year. Some examples:

Learn how to create awesome Jing instructional videos for your staff to embed in your wiki or blog.
We will share the advantages creating an educational school account for VoiceThread and training advice that can save time and energy.
You think you know YouTube but can you download them to embed in various applications?
School-wide Summer Reading Blog, department wikis, slideshow programs, Creative Commons and much more will be shared.

Classroom Technology Resources from Lakeview Academy (Connie is using Prezi.com as her presentation tool):

VoiceThread - visual and audio presentations; combine mini-presentations from students who have learned about historical figures. Another option is to use this as an interactive teaching tools and create a video to give feedback to students on submitted work.
Glogster - multimedia, online posters; add text, pictures, music, videos, etc to an online space (no more glue sticks!)
Jing - think "mini-Camtasia"; short videos. Record your screen and add audio. Very useful for small "how-tos" for teachers.
Wikis - They use wikispaces. They have made a different wiki for each grade level. Very useful wiki for teachers: teachweb2.wikispaces.com.
YouTube - Started in 2005; first video posted by the folks from PayPal; 10 hrs of video are uploaded every day. Incorporate these into wikis and blogs. Have students create videos and post them on YouTube.
Tumblr - Slideshow tool; embed other Web 2.0 creations
Misc: blogs (one for summer reading), Planetfesto, freerice.com, Quizlet (flashcards for individual or group use), and Wordle.

Assessment in a Digital Age

Monday, July 20, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

Elizabeth Helfant is from Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) in St. Louis, MO.

Session description:
Classroom technology enables emphasis to be placed on the learning process. This session explores the ways that technology can make the learning process more transparent and can provide greater opportunity for feedback and student self-assessment.
For example:

Wikis make individual contribution to group work documentable.
Online quizzes allow for formative and summative assessment of smaller chunks of information.
Google Notebook provides an opportunity for teachers to watch student research and provide feedback as the research is happening.
Blogs provide a venue for student self-reflection.
Google forms can be used to collect student responses to simple questions.

As more student work is created in electronic format, the electronic portfolio becomes a more viable assessment option. This session will explore how electronic tools and classroom technology can be used to assess student learning.

During the session Elizabeth is giving examples of how teachers are integrating technology in the classroom and using those technologies to assess student understanding and learning.

Diagnostic Assessment -- embed a YouTube video in a blog; ask students to comment on blog. The students can see each others' comments, but the responses are more conversational. In Google Forms, they will not see the other student's answers.

Formative Assessment -- Blogs and reflective journals are good for this. Or choose to have one student be the "reflector" of the day and have the other students respond to those. (Teachers should use an RSS feed to get all of these comments in real-time, so that you can become more involved in this process as well). If you don't want this in a public forum, use Google Docs.
Less formal forms of this type of assessment include wikis (be sure to include a discussion tab). This is great to use for group/lab reports as it allows the instructor to view how much each individual contributed to the project and how long there were on the wiki page.
Student response software with DyKnow -- there are two ways to do this:

Through a status request. Students can automatically update their status to reflect if they "understand", "do not understand", or are somewhere in the middle.
By sending a T/F, Y/N, or multiple choice question to the students' computers. DyKnow collects and aggregates all of the responses into a pie chart or bar graph.

Summative Assessment -- Webassign, education software for teachers, is traditional assessment. It will randomize the questions for the students and grade them according to their own order of questions.

More examples...
Project Based Learning

AP class must build and create a museum; create a wiki; a podcast
UStream a video of student presentation on what they would change about their school; archived, so students can do self-assessment afterward
Many, many more!

21st Century Learning -- Information from Taipei American School

Monday, July 20, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

David Sinclair is discussing what the 21st century learner "looks like" with a sustainable 1:1 program. They are in their 2nd year of the program at Taipei American School. They have 1400 students and 250 faculty. Currently, grades 6-8 use DyKnow Vision and Monitor.

Begining the program:
It has been very important to include as many people as possible in this process. They have a student forum, a parent forum and a faculty forum -- they want to create communities within their school. These communities are basically different committees, which included community and government members.
They made a decision to ensure parents were on board once they got 'buy-in' from the students.

Faculty buy-in:

Faculty are catalysts. They are those who push the envelop, who want to be cutting-edge.
Faculty professional development includes online learning and time with a tech support person.
Faculty were quick to grasp the use of the Tablet PC. Interactive whiteboards have become redundant now that Tablet PCs are present. Everyone likes OneNote for organization; Inking is everywhere on campus.

Actual in-class use:
Curriculum Drives Technology use at all times. Web 2.0 tools are popular -- wikis, social networking tools, multimedia, and blogs are a few of the education classroom technology that are used.

Tech Check Point session occur every two weeks. They are an opportunity for students to learn about different technologies as well as digital citizenship and appropriate use in the electronic classroom.

Suggestions for others:

Ensure that your program is flexible and adaptive. Things change -- technology, costs, etc. all change. Be sure that your computing program can change, too, to adapt.
Communicating with constituents, particularly those who are at a distance, is a challenge. They put as much information online, though forums and blogs, as possible.
Ask questions of those who are already involved with classroom technology plans, particularly those who have done what you'd like to do.
Considering getting rid of computer labs when you have a 1:1. They were able to create 18 new classrooms from spaces that were previously computer labs.

Laptop Institute 2009 has begun!

Monday, July 20, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

Last night kicked off the beginning of Laptop Institute 2009 in Memphis, Tennessee.

This morning we're learning about what we'll be experiencing at the conference -- including the vendors (yes, DyKnow is one), wonderful experiences with innovative educational technology and how to build a successful 1:1 computing program.

I'm looking forward to hearing about our customer experiences using classroom management and interactive education software in the classroom. I'm also looking forward to seeing how additional classroom technology can be integrated into the classroom and, possibly, used alongside DyKnow.

To see what others are experiencing here, you can also check out Twitter and search for #laptopinstitute.

Customer Story: St. Ursula Academy, Moving to a Digital Environment

Thursday, June 18, 2009 by Kristy Guthrie

St. Ursula Academy has been integrating technology into the curriculum for many years now. They have a Tablet PC 1:1 computing program that incorporates learning software as well as classroom management software.

They found it important to provide the right tools to teachers to be successful in their own classroom when using various classroom technologies. They've been doing a great job, too. Many schools near them have adapted some of the same tools and technologies for their own technology enhanced classroom.

It's been wonderful to work with SUA and we look forward to many more exciting stories from this school!