What would you do if you could start from scratch?

Hi all,

The title says it all really. What would you do if you were given the opportunity to make all the decisions about your school's technology needs and none had been made yet.

Specifically LMS but really anything, what if you were given a blank canvas, what would you do ???

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Casal on October 18, 2011 at 8:04am

Great question...

1) Google Apps for Ed (we have it now and I'd do it over in a heartbeat)

2) Chromebook carts for students (not 1:1 necessarily...)

3) iMac lab for larger-form work requiring a full OS

4) iPads for teachers for conferring, assessing, collaborating, etc (we have it now and it's great)

5) LCDs instead of SmartBoards (great article about the possibilities http://speirs.org/blog/2011/3/24/the-next-generation-classroom-av-s... )

6) LCDs instead of bulletin boards

I'm sure I'll come up with other bits after I post this, but it is a general idea...

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Permalink Reply by Tim Barlow on October 19, 2011 at 4:04am

Thanks Chris!

What software package do ou use for attendance and reporting? Do you have a LMS? What other applications does your school run?

Cheers,

Tim

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Casal on October 19, 2011 at 6:02am

I am in the New York City Department of Education so attendance (and most personal student data) is tracked via a 1970s era DOS style program ironically called Automate The Schools (ATS). Scanned bubble sheets, black screen/green fonts interface, completely old school (a polite way of saying antiquated).

In addition, we are an elementary school so there isn't really a need for online classes and things of that nature. For staff we use Google Docs to help track student data such as reading levels and the like.

The NYCDOE tracks all the basic student data through ATS so we could pay for an additional system but we'd still have to use ATS so we haven't investigated any LMS since it would in essence be a duplication of work. Also, staff and parents haven't been asking for any LMS style functionality so while we are aware of what an LMS could do, we just haven't seen a need for one.