Tuesday, March 24, 2009

We have the opportunity this year to purchase and upgrade some of our ICT equipment in the classroom thanks to our local Otago Community Trust.

After MUCH discussion we are looking at:

  • Bluetooth mouse and one of the small Apple keyboards for each teacher - linked to their TELA laptop

  • 1500+ lumen projector to be shared among every three classes - already have this sussed purchasing from TradeMe. I have not paid more than $500 for three very good projectors so far.

  • 40+ inch LCD TV on a trolly like this for each pair of classes....can be used as a monitor that everyone can see and is not effected ambient light like a projector!

  • digital camera for each room. Teachers will have two sets of rechargable batteries and their own twin charger. We also have 5 cameras that are available all the time for anyone who needs them.


Also other issues:

  • All teachers have admin rights to their TELA laptop and all teachers have one.

  • We have a pod of 9 mac laptops - ex TELA machines. We will purchase the current lot in 18 months too.

  • Wiimote IWB or two for the school

  • we have two tablets as well but they are not well used (as in used much) at the moment at all.

  • We are going to replace our server ASAP with a PC box to manage data, email etc with a mac-mini to provide mac profiles and mac user authentication. Have it sussed as to how to do this now in a robust way....yay.

  • Will run our own Wordpress install in the future to host our school website rather than Edublogs. Mostly so we can manage our own plugins etc.

  • We are using a wiki to host our staff meeting notes as well as curriculum documentation and professional learning resources. This is working particularly well - as a professional learning tool and opportunity for staff. We embed key documents in the appropriate pages using Scribd.


What do you see as 'key kit' for teachers? Anything missing from my list?

Please go wild in the comments .... :-)


cheers
Greg

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Feedback on the Principals' Workshop 1

How much value did you get from the Principals' Workshop on the 9th of March?
Have you got any suggestions or feedback that could improve of be of value to you and your school for the next workshop?