#2 on tour

after two days looking at schools in san deigo i’m now on the freeway, earbuds in, listening to biggie smalls, while crammed in the back of a chevvy suburban, tethering my iphone to my air and blogging. today we went to escondido and went to schools who have one to one ipods throughout the school. The kids were articulate and switched on to learning. these are low decile schools, behavioural incidents exist, however the “switched on classrooms” have made a massive effect on the behavior and learning. These were alive classrooms and children who valued their teachers and peers alike. The principal we met was clear about her vision and could articulate it.

Both schools talked about creativity with the ipods. They had a vision of moving beyond remembering and shifting to creativity.

Like all schools they are in the middle of continuous improvement and these schools know that to get anywhere you need : PD, buy in, a will, success, etc.

Both schools owned nearly 800 ipods each and had a system of sync and upgrade etc. Interestingly they made teachers responsible for their own sync (they each had a huge sync station in their classroom), good work though because you have to make the job manageable as well as giving it longevity and ownership.

Q: How many teachers / principals have thrown away their laptop and gone to the device only?

Ob: I saw school owned devices however lots of kids have an ipod at home as well. Because of security around the internet they cant bring them to school. Interesting.