Nexus 7 Tablets and Chromebooks at Lewis Elementary

Working under the table...

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This year our 5th grade students at Lewis Elementary are 1:1 using Chromebooks and Nexus 7 tablets. Basically for each 5th grade classroom we have a half set of Chromebooks and a half set of Nexus 7 tablets. So for every two students, they share a Chromebook and a tablet, and at any given time there is a device available for every student. We chose this option because of cost, and also because we wanted to take advantages of the strengths of each tool and have devices that tied into our Google Apps for Education ecosystem.

Working on the bench...

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The Chromebooks provide a traditional laptop experience. The tablets allow us to utilize a good quality camera, along with easy audio recording. Quite a few students also use the Nexus as a writing tool. They dictate a first draft using the voice to text feature to convert spoken words to text into Google Docs. They then can easily open up the doc on their Chromebooks for more editing. 

All in all we are very happy with our mixed environment. As I mentioned we use Google Apps for education and the ability to login to multiple accounts on both the Chromebooks and the Nexus 7 tablets makes the process of students accessing their work a pretty easy process. 

We also utilize the Hapara Teacher Dashboard which helps teachers easily keep track of student work. I'll have more to say about Hapara in a future post. 

Snow in Portland

Snowy walk #Annabella

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Lydia and Mike #mikeyly

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Snowy day at Lewis... #snowyday

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For the most part winter in Portland means rain. Temperatures between the mid 30s and high 40s, and lots of grey sky and interesting clouds (I love the clouds in Oregon.) So when we do get snow it is special. The kids at school get excited, the adults too. Also, snow is often times followed by freezing rain, making walking, let alone driving, pretty treacherous. 

Last Thursday snow was forecast in Portland, and sure enough it started to snow at my school around 10:30 am. With a significant amount forecast, my district made the decision to dismiss school at 1:00 pm. Our district uses a variety of tools to get information to parents. These include automated phone calls, automated email and texts, posts to the district web page, posts to the district Facebook page, and posts to Twitter, not to mention announcements on local legacy media.  By 2:00 pm we only had 4 students still at school. By 3:30 all students had been picked up. 

In total we got about 6 inches of snow. Anything over an inch will shut down the city, so you can imagine that over the weekend things slowed down quite a bit. Streets were turned into ski and sled runs. 

Saturday night the temperature rose and the snow turned to freezing rain. Sunday we woke up to everything covered in ice. School was again called off on Monday. As I write this all major streets are clear pavement, but parking areas are still covered with snow, and most folks have not been able to clear their sidewalks. I can attest to the difficulty of chipping and clearing frozen snow. 

No word yet on school on Tuesday, but I anticipate a possible late opening. I was out at school today and the side streets near the school are hard to pass. 

Looking forward to the return of the rain later in the week...

Snow Day...

We got a bit of snow and cold temperatures this week. Thursday snow was predicted and right on que, it started snowing around 10:00 am. Our school district made the decision to call for an early dismissal at 1:00 pm. By 2:00 pm we only had about 4 students left. I stayed with the last one until about 3:30. By then it was only I and the evening custodian in the building. 

I went out to my car, but it would not start. I have an older diesel and when it gets cold (well cold for Portland) it has trouble. I called the local gas station for a jump, but he could not get it started. So ended up taking the bus most of the way and then walking home. 

No school today in Portland.

SPARK: Ideas will fly...

On Friday, I had the opportunity to attend an event sponsored by OETC. The event, SPARK, was an opportunity to listen to 5 speakers ( Joe Morelock, Amber Case, Ben Grey, Ruben Puentedura, and Dan Ariely) discuss ideas about education and the interplay of technology and learning, in a setting that encouraged conversation and interaction. It was refreshing to listen to the speakers and then discuss the ideas with others at the event. A friend and i were lamenting that the professional development that we as administrators have to sit through, is nowhere near as engaging as this was. Wondering why the monthly leadership meetings that I attend can not be more like this event. Video of the talks will be posted in the near future. 

OETC is also the organization behind the annual Integrated series of conferences. IntegratedPDX is coming up at the end of February in Portland. It is a very accessible event, allowing speakers and participants many opportunities for conversation and interaction. This year they are adding a one day strand specifically for school administrators. Accelerate for Administrators will be an opportunity to for school administrators to learn and share in a setting that encourages connections. If you are interested in the confluence of technology and learning, this looks to be a great event. I'm looking forward to taking part.

Instagram

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Ben Grey speaking SPARK

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No (Printing) Selfies

A sign in Ms. Speer's classroom. Recently we have added an app to our Nexus 7s that allows students to print to the Ricoh copier in our library. Once the kids figured out the printing someone got the idea to print out selfie pictures. The ban on selfies is really a ban on printing selfies. The kids still take lots of pictures, but we have talked with them about being responsible about printing. 

 

Postcards from Lewis: January 24, 2014

A few photos from last week.

1. Our students are enjoying our new traverse wall that was installed in the gym over winter break. 

2. 4th grade students in Ms. Rotwein's classroom solving problems on their dry erase boards.

3. Kindergarten students using the light table in Ms. Dana's classroom.

4. 3rd grade students in Ms. Elissa's classroom working on the floor.

5. Vision screening of kindergarten students.

6. A 4th grade students solving her problem using a dry erase board.