Creating Collaborative Classrooms

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!