Monday, January 10, 2005
First Post
Ok folks we have had our first meeting. I was pleased with the way that settled in on what we were supposed to do. I apologize for the delay in getting the Blog started. The student survey in the high school is very tedious but we took them. Now we have to tabulate them.
Here are some conventions that we will use here.
a) Nothing is off the table. All ideas are welcome and encouraged.
b) Everyone here has good intentions. Please confine any discussion or disagreements to the issues. NO PERSONAL ATTACKS will be tolerated.
c)Please stay on topic as much as possible.
d)This blog is a group project and not available to the public!
e)Members are expected to contribute regularly and comment on other contributions.
f) Please let Norman know of anyone you would like to invite to the group so we can maintain a list of who is participation. Norman will make the invites. There is no limit.
That all said and done, lets get down to the task at hand. The group on the 5th seemed to agree that the task of this committee was to demonstrate that being a laptop school would give a significant advantage to St. Marys students relative to other schools in the area and the country, and improve the performance of our students within the existing curriculum of St. Marys. Our job was NOT to redefine curriculum but rather to redefine the delivery of that curriculum.
We also seemed to agree that we are really going to reinvent school and use our curriculum to foster independent learning with our students and faculty. We are going to have to demonstrate how we are going to turn our teachers into laptop teachers and our students into laptop learners. There are many ways to foster independent thinking and learning. Our task is to demonstrate that laptops improve them all, especially when every student has one.
We seemed to agree that as part of the plan we would outline how we intend to take the St. Marys curriculum online to provide more and different opportunities for our students and teachers to develop their lifelong learning and teaching skills.
We would like to produce a draft of this portion of the tech plan by Feb 15, 2005.
Now how do we go about doing this.........................
Feel Free to blog away.
Here are some conventions that we will use here.
a) Nothing is off the table. All ideas are welcome and encouraged.
b) Everyone here has good intentions. Please confine any discussion or disagreements to the issues. NO PERSONAL ATTACKS will be tolerated.
c)Please stay on topic as much as possible.
d)This blog is a group project and not available to the public!
e)Members are expected to contribute regularly and comment on other contributions.
f) Please let Norman know of anyone you would like to invite to the group so we can maintain a list of who is participation. Norman will make the invites. There is no limit.
That all said and done, lets get down to the task at hand. The group on the 5th seemed to agree that the task of this committee was to demonstrate that being a laptop school would give a significant advantage to St. Marys students relative to other schools in the area and the country, and improve the performance of our students within the existing curriculum of St. Marys. Our job was NOT to redefine curriculum but rather to redefine the delivery of that curriculum.
We also seemed to agree that we are really going to reinvent school and use our curriculum to foster independent learning with our students and faculty. We are going to have to demonstrate how we are going to turn our teachers into laptop teachers and our students into laptop learners. There are many ways to foster independent thinking and learning. Our task is to demonstrate that laptops improve them all, especially when every student has one.
We seemed to agree that as part of the plan we would outline how we intend to take the St. Marys curriculum online to provide more and different opportunities for our students and teachers to develop their lifelong learning and teaching skills.
We would like to produce a draft of this portion of the tech plan by Feb 15, 2005.
Now how do we go about doing this.........................
Feel Free to blog away.
# posted by MrC @ 3:12 PM 
