I love this clip from Breakfast TV during the week. A really rich environment shared with the public – and an insight into where we are going with our digital journey and KnowledgeNet. I think that it is really important that non teachers can get an insight into what our classroom environments are like:

As I start into the 2013 school year, I’m excited about the prospect of what lies ahead. Our school is venturing into KnowledgeNet – a Learning Management System, with the hope that this will create greater links between home and school for students, parents and teachers. This is a significant investment for the school and to ensure its success we are also releasing a teacher to support the implementation of it school wide. I have spent money getting more mobile devices into our classrooms, with the intention that we will get more this year, as well as opening up to a BYOD scheme. I’m posting this in here as I’d like to document our journey and where we go.

I have come across a couple of interesting articles on Stuff this morning – one reinforcing why our move to an LMS and BYOD is important- showing just how savvy our kids are, as they enter and go through school. Schools need to be places where this can continue – not where they ‘switch off’ to their higher level thinking and ownership of what they are doing.

This is an interesting one too -Some schools are fortunate to have the demographics where all or most children will have their own device to bring to school, others are not in this situation. Even if your students do all have their own devices there still lies the issues of the ‘haves and the have nots’ – those who have more up to date technology, those that have tablets and ipads, compared to those on netbooks and laptops. How does a teacher manage and ensure equity in their classroom even with this as a model?

The government has taken much longer than initially planned to upgrade the infrastructure in schools (SNUPPing), and the UFB project is also slowing spreading. Wouldn’t it be a perfect world for this infrastructure to be in place and for the Ministry to then fund the devices in classrooms? I don’t even think it needs to be a 1:1 scheme. For me, much of the learning happens ‘around the device’ – the conversations, the thinking, the delving for answers by talking with someone else using the same device. Next challenge – how do you provide technical support to all schools that is credible and reliable, that allows learning to be uninterrupted? Easy to do in the cities I imagine – close at hand, reasonably priced I would expect too. How do rural areas even find the right person, let alone fund the person who can demand the price they can?

There needs to be a large look around the ‘big picture’ of our ICT developments in NZ schools. While the current focus is on infrastruture and the Network for Learning, I have reservations that the gap is getting wider between the schools who have access and are thinking ahead, as opposed to those who may be a little resistant. How can we solve this? What needs to be done???