Instructional Technology & Digital Learning-Andover High School Update Week Of September 2-5 2014

The startup of the Andover Innovation Lab/Help Desk was great as we have 7 students beginning projects. The new format at the help desk will have students creating webcasts. They are also going to be blogging soon about their projects and I look forward to reading about their learning process and projects. Students are ramped up to participate in ways to help assist teachers with the use of technology in their classrooms.

The District’s Tech Con has once again started the year with a bang and I had the great opportunity to present on a variety of Project Based Learning Technology Tools for the classroom and also presented on the Integration Of Social Media Into Our School District with Director Of Digital Learning Joanne Najarian. I have included the links to our presentations below.

I have had many opportunities to discuss the implementation of the Lego Mindstorm Kits into the Middle School science curriculum with Steve Sanborn the Program Coordinator for the Science/Engineering Department in Andover. Its great to see the enthusiasm he has for this program and the opportunities this program will present for the integration of coding,engineering and robotics into his program.

It was rewarding this week to reconnect with the teachers about technology and see where their goals are at for the year. I had the opportunity to work with Louise Cummings and her team in the Transitions Program at the high school to integrate Google Calendar across their computers so they could manage the support for different students needs.  

On additional professional levels I just completed the development of a curriculum for a course in “Web Application Development” for Bunker Hill Community College. This course includes to ebooks which delve into the context of web applications in the modern world of web development as well as a technical project which allows students to work their way through a project through the course. I am proud to complete the development of this course and look forward to its implementation.

So we have taken off with a huge push and plan on completing so many new technology projects this year! Looking forward to a great year of collaboration,sharing and learning with the fine teachers,administration and staff of the Andover Public Schools

Instructional Technology & Andover Innovation Lab Update March 17-21 2014 Daniel Downs

At the Andover Innovation lab and student run help desk we are busy planning for our promotion efforts for next year! We had current students create flyers to hang around the school promoting our program. Students will be able to sign up for the help desk next year during the week of March 24th thru 31st.

From an instructional technology perspective teacher awareness of the use of web 2.0 tools is been a major focus this month as I have been sharing the district resources for Digital Learning. These resources help teachers to integrate a variety of web 2.0 tools into the classroom and also be able to differentiate what the difference between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 tools is. Please review the link below to review some of Andover Public Schools Digital Learning Approved Tools. At a recent faculty meeting I was able to present the availability of these materials and  presented to faculty the tools and suggestions for integration.

https://sites.google.com/a/k12.andoverma.us/digital-learning/approved-web-2-0

A tool that I was able to directly introduce to them at the same meeting was the social bookmarking tool Symbaloo. This is a very graphical bookmarking tool that allows you to set its interface as the homepage of your computer and also create multiple pages of bookmarks. I can highly recommend the use of this tool for teachers particularly for creating specific pages of bookmarks to share with students and also the ability of this tool in other users

“webmixes” of links and resources.

https://www.symbaloo.com/

This is great for finding new resources and also sharing specific subject area links. Another option would be to have students create accounts and make their own list of links to share with the teacher.

This week at Andover High School we were in the midst of MCAS testing. It became a great time to catch up on projects but also to connect with teachers more easily about how their technology is functioning and how their current projects may be developing.

On Thursday I had Natalie Pinta come and shadow me for a day at Andover High. She was interested in viewing how were integrating technology into our classrooms and the tools and culture we were creating with student and staff use. She was really impressed with the collaborative approach and willingness of teachers to let me into their classroom.