Class of 2016 iWizards Well Prepared for their Futures

Four iWizard seniors (and a senior citizen!)

As I recently posted, some of my iWizards have grown up! As originally formed three years ago, all members were ninth graders.  While still skewed toward younger members, the iWizards will now be represented by students from four grade levels, among them the seniors pictured above.

Three of my seniors have been vitally involved with the program since its inception. We have shared many wonderful experiences and I have promised them that for all of their efforts I will write them absolutely superb college recommendations. I am presently in the process of drafting these letters. In those recommendations I will be remarking upon how the iWizard experience has helped these young women develop the following qualities:

Leadership

The iWizards do not have fixed leadership positions. For each project, leaders are self-selected or selected by project teammates. Senior iWizards have been leading projects for four years now and have been continually identified as take-charge individuals with exceptional leadership skills.

Responsibility

The iWizards are accountable to each other rather than an adult leader and the team bond is the most effective system of accountability. Students who do not follow through don't remain iWizards very long.

Self Direction

iWizards are given free reign to develop their curriculum and instructional plans for projects like the new student iPad orientation and iCreate! — an arts workshop for middle school students. They do not need “approval” from a teacher though they select mentors who critique their work. The mentor's participation is more collegial than hierarchical.

Problem Solving

The iWizards become good at problem-solving. These problems could be technical, logistical or inter-personal.  

Presentation Skills 

All iWizards are involved in making presentations at student-to-student workshops.  This includes developing slide presentations or designing ice-breaker activities. The students whose letters of recommendations I am writing also presented last spring at the largest teacher technology convention in our state. They were invited by Apple to present on “ iWizards-- Empowering Students as Leaders“.

Collaboration

Outside of developing our collection of iPad Tips and Tricks, all of our projects have been completed as teams that have required continual communication through digital means such as Google Apps.

Stretching Technical Skills

It is not uncommon for the iWizards to join a particular project team so that they can learn more about a technology. Perhaps the best example of this would be a project team which intended to introduce the Schoology LMS to new students. They were required to learn how to use and develop tutorials before the school actually adopted it. Consequently, they became proficient long before the great majority of teachers did.

Service

Finally, after mentioning all of these intangible benefits the iWizards gain from their participation in the group, it should be noted that all of their projects perform a service to the school or greater community. The benefits of this program flow in both directions.

A Staff's Self-Measurement of ISTE Standards Revisited

In 2013 we developed a likert scale survey for our teachers at Mercy several of the the ISTE Standards and published the results to iMercy.  We are now nearing the completion of an iMercy second edition.  In order to update the book's section on the "Compelling Evidence of Success" of our iPad program we revisited the staff with the same survey.

We were pleased to discover that a greater number of teachers agreed when applying ISTE standards to themselves than they did in 2013. 

I conclude that this across-standards improvement is due to the faculties' greater experience with Apple technology and our decision to adopt a more user friendly LMS.

For a look at the survey results from our ninth graders, see Strong Evidence of iPad Success with Mercy Students

Strong Evidence of iPad Success with Mercy Students

This spring we completed a survey of nearly all of our ninth graders using a likert scale to measure their perceptions of how intrinsic their iPads were to their learning in school.  We used the the ISTE Standards for Students as the criteria for measuring this.

We has used the identical survey in 2013 when we applied to become an Apple Distinguished School.  In every instance the 2015 students were in greater agreement that they had made the fifteen standards that we had selected.

The above chart is an excellent example. Asked to what extent they agreed that they had fun learning with their iPads, about 57% agreed or strongly agreed in 2013.  In 2015, 60% strongly agreed and the great majority of the rest agreed.

Impressive results were measured with other very important standards, such as "My iPad aids me in exploring solutions":

Why did the 2015 ninth graders a higher percentage of agreement with the survey statements shaped from the ISTE Standards. My own classroom observations lead me to believed that their teachers integrated the iPad more fundamentally into instruction. I also believe that the Mercy's adoption of Schoology as and LMS was a factor. The iPad app for Schoology is closely approximates browser functionality.

Click through the following slide show if you are interested in seeing the other survey results* as well.

Student survey results freshmen v freshmen comparison 2015 from Laurence Baker

------------------------

*Thank you Christopher Blitz for creating this great slide show for our updated version of iMercy.

What's Next for the iWizards?

iWizards at iCreate Planning Meeting

Hot off of our successful iPad iCreate Workshop for seventh and eighth graders, the iWizards are now turning their attention to several other activities over the next couple of months.

Jan-Feb 

iWizards Tips & Tricks iTunes U and Schoology Courses
The iWizards are currently working on a project of collecting iPad "tips & tricks" about to share with the Mercy community through a Schoology course.  We have tentatively decided it will have the following features

*lessons that last 1-2 minutes
*GIF badges as "rewards"
*Possibly some kind of raffle for those who "complete" the course.

Gabriella Meyers, our Apple DE recently visited and suggested we create an iTunes U course with iWizard tips and tricks.  I think this is a great idea and would complement the Schoology course.

Feb. 15

Winter Open House Demonstration
For the past three years the iWizards have provided iPad demonstrations for prospective students.

Fall '14 Open House Demonstration

Feb 27

Assist at Tech Talk
Mrs. Carol Rife will be conducting and Animation Creator HD break-out session at Tech Talk. Based on the their effectiveness at iCreate she intends to ask iWizards to assist.

March 20

MACUL Presentation
Mrs. Meyers has asked us to consider doing an iWizards presentation in the Apple room at the 2015 MACUL Conference-- the largest state educational technology conference on March 20, Cobo Center, Detroit.

March 26

iWizard Workshop
All of the iWizards will gather for a full-day workshop to create the program and materials for the 2015 iPad orientation for new students. The orientation will be held on August 14.

The Basketball Team Scores . . . . with the iPad

iScore Interface

This season's Mercy High School basketball team distinguished itself on the court as Catholic League and Regional Champs.  They also tied a school record with 25 victories.  As the girls racked up the points on the court, their two managers Kailey, and Bianca tracked the stats on their iPads.  Using the $9.99 app, iScore Basketball Scorekeeper, they provided the statistical breakdown after each game for grateful "Coach of the Year", Gary Morris.

Bianca and Kailey take stats at a recent game. (Photo by Nicole).

Apps for School Administrators

At Mercy, we are putting together an iBook on how we use technology. Here is a piece I created to describe digital solutions for keeping organized on the fly:

A Professional Development Assignment

Like some teachers, I enjoy planning a new class almost as much as I do teaching it.  A project assignment I am launching today for my graduate students draws from my recent experiences going to a 1:1 iPad environment at Mercy.  The project assignment calls upon students to plan an in-service day for teachers.  They can choose any sort of technology training.  The following slides indicate the required and optional components:

PD Assignment EDU 6720 from Laurence Baker

Exciting Tech Times at Mercy High School

These are exciting tech times at Mercy High School.  Our Board of Trustees has just approved some big summer expenditures related to instructional technology at Mercy.  I have included these with some other major projects:

May, 2013  

* All teachers and ninth grade students are completing a survy based on the ISTE NETS standards so that we can gather some data on the impact of our iPad 1:1 program.

*Incoming ninth graders order their new iPads at the Mercy Site through June.

June, 2013

* The IT Department will be preparing new MacBook Airs for Mercy teachers.  These laptops will all contain iBooks Author software.

July, 2013

* New ninth graders and transfers will begin receiving their new Mercy iPad packages.  Mr. James and Mr. Bank will give them a 30 minute session with their new devices.

* Mercy will be install a major wifi network upgrade that will significantly boost capacity and speed. It will support our Apple TVs now and our Technology Vision into the next years.

*Mercy will get a major upgrade of our "old" computer lab.  Brand new HP computers will replace the "old" ones and the lab will seat 25 students and 1 instructor just like our Mac Lab.  CAD software will be loaded on these machines for our new design courses. All machines will have dual monitors.

August, 2013

*Mercy will publish an iBook describing our innovative technology program.  We are using technology in innovative and creative ways.  We want our community to read about it, hear about it, and watch it in a new iBook.

*The iWizards will lead our new students through a half-day iPad orientation.  The program has been created by the iWizards.  They have been working for months on the project!

Sometime, 2013-14

*Mercy will host a regional educational technology conference, showcasing and sharing best instructional technology practices.  Mrs. Ann Lusch is taking the reigns of this project.

Mercy High School is not resting on its laurels.  We intend to continue as leaders in the field of instructional technology.

Unintended Consequences

As I mentioned in Distinguishing Our School, we have initiated two major efforts to distinguish our school's integration of educational technology.  In addition to publishing an iBook which catalogues some of our best practices and innovations, we are going to conduct survey research that measures our students progress towards meeting the ISTE-NETS for Students.

 Katie B.'s home page & original photo

When our sub-committee was recently meeting to write this survey, our president, Dr. Cheryl Delaney-Kreger, made an interesting observation. She noted that iPad had empowered our ninth graders in ways that we had not foreseen.  For example, students who may not have stood out as academically talented in conventional ways, had self-nominated themselves to be iWizards and were showing exceptional aptitude plying digital skills.  Also, in new ways,  we are seeing students take direction and responsibility for their own learning.

Of course Mercy has always celebrated a great range of student talents.  We have also seen students assume self-direction for their learning in various disciplines and programs.  But it occurs to me that the iPad has facilitated great possibilities in both of these areas because it is so easy to use.  One does not need considerable training with the tool before one can harness its powers.  In other words, this year our ninth graders were more or less able to "hit the ground running" with our technology.  And they were fortunate to find themselves in an environment where technology was was already part of the DNA of our instructional environment.

I am really looking forward to seeing how we stack up against the NETS.  I'll let you know this summer!

About iCloud, Samsung, and MSU Basketball

iPads, Apps Helped Michigan State Blow Out Michigan The MSU staff already had access to a complete database of U-M ball screens in Big Ten play, put together by student manager Brenden Durco. Thanks to MSU's Sports Tec scouting program, a click of the button could show MSU coaches every instance of every ball screen combination -- Mitch McGary setting a screen for Burke, Jordan Morgan setting a screen for Hardaway Jr., and so on.  http://tinyurl.com/a8x4e4j

Photo from to beacherreport.com  (http://tinyurl.com/a5cmvay)

When iCloud isn’t enough: When iCloud launched in 2011, I had hopes it would be a single-source solution, but over the years it’s become apparent to me that for my uses, no single cloud-based storage fulfills all my needs. Instead, I rely on a few different solutions based on the strengths of each platform.  http://tinyurl.com/b8h4bx8

How to Say ‘Look at Me!’ to an Online Recruiter  Not having an Internet presence can be damaging, Ms. Safani said. She is among those who recommend that job seekers spend serious time detailing their skills and experience on commercial sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, with an eye toward making their names a magnet for search engines.http://tinyurl.com/auuyyxj

Samsung Emerges as a Potent Rival to Apple’s Cool  The South Korean manufacturer’s Galaxy S III smartphone is the first device to run neck and neck with Apple’s iPhone in sales. Armed with other Galaxy phones and tablets, Samsung has emerged as a potent challenger to Apple, the top consumer electronics maker. The two companies are the only ones turning profits in the highly competitive mobile phone industry, with Apple taking 72 percent of the earnings and Samsung the rest.  http://tinyurl.com/allcghq

Use Evernote and StudyBlue to Create Online Flashcards If your students are using Evernote to record and organize notes during their classes, importing some of the notes into StudyBlue could be a convenient way to create review materials. http://tw.gs/Y1zdgz

I’ve got 99 problems, but a test ain’t one I have not given a test the entire first semester. Not a single quiz or unit exam shows up in a column. My students smile just as wide when they look at their grades as well. It’s been an amazing year so far, why ruin it with an ugly bubble test?  http://tinyurl.com/alc44ss

Googling, CBL, and the Value of Mistakes

The Value of Mistakes

If we don’t allow students to fail in the classroom we are setting them up for failure in the real world.  If we see knowledge as just enough to “pass a course” then we miss the point of learning.  Sure, students might get the ‘right answers’ on an exam but know little about solving problems. 

(By way of Joyce Rosario)

http://tinyurl.com/b7ld9gw

Why “Googling It” Is Not Enough

Young people who’ve grown up in the digital age often have the impression that everything anyone needs to know is located somewhere on the web—so devise assignments that show them it isn’t so. Ask them to find a book in the library that hasn’t yet been scanned by Google Books; require them to consult with a research librarian, who will give them a sense of how many and varied non-digital resources are available; have them conduct an oral history project, collecting stories from living people that can’t be found on a website.

http://tinyurl.com/b2wotjo

CBL and the Common Core

While the Common Core documents adamantly state that the standards do not dictate how teachers teach, they have naturally resulted in important discussions about how the teaching and learning process needs to change to address the "shifts" inherent in the standards. This becomes particularly apparent when reviewing the College and Career Readiness anchor standards embedded within the Common Core. Developing students who are self-directed; demonstrate discipline-specific expertise; comprehend and critique; appropriately respond to their context; and back up their opinions with evidence demands a much more experiential and interactive learning environment than is currently found in many schools.

http://tinyurl.com/bcxwju5

"Library of Congress" CC photo by mateoutah

Library Of Congress Unveils Massive Common Core Resource Center

Like a superhero, the U.S. Library of Congress has just swooped in and unveiled an enormous new (and free!) resource that’s all about the Common Core. It’s located at http://www.loc.gov/teachers and worth checking out.

http://tinyurl.com/8lq8eo8

Igniting Change from the Middle

1. Act before talking. Model the way. Do what you hope others will do.

2. Don’t ask do. Push the edges of your authority and responsibility. Don’t wait for permission.

3. Don’t tell. Stop telling those over you what they should do. They resist when they feel pushed. Do it yourself.

http://tinyurl.com/anmg43v

Five Critical Mistakes Schools Make With iPads (And How To Correct Them)

The most common mistake teachers make with iPads is focusing on subject-specific apps. In doing so, many completely overlook the full range of possibilities with the iPad. I think of a Latin teacher who declared the iPad useless because he couldn’t find a good Latin app.

It simply didn’t occur to him use the VoiceThread app to record his students speaking Latin, or perhaps create a collaborative discussion of Cicero. 

http://tinyurl.com/bvwbfmj

Rockin' with our Ninth Grade iPad "Wizards"

Lucy gets the girls organized

Last week, 26 MHS ninth graders spent a full school day with our Mercy 2.0 professional development consultant, Lucy Gray.   Lucy has facilitated staff PD with the staff through the year.  On Friday, she spent a day challenging and organizing this enthusiastic group of freshwomen who had applied or been invited to join this group.  Lucy put them through the paces with a number of activities:

Ice Breaker
Lucy has a great idea for helping our ninth graders become acquainted-- She asked each one to name her iPad "superpower" and favorite app. There was an unanticipated benefit to this conversation.  The girls served as a window into the classroom usage of the iPad and to what degree it had been integrated into their teachers' instructional methods. Their nominated apps were interesting, and I will share them in an upcoming post.

Doing the Research
In anticipation of the day, Lucy, Tom James, and I developed an agenda that we shared with the girls in the form of a Google Doc.  Included in the agenda were links to sites which featured student technology groups which were active elsewhere.  Consequently, after the ice-breaker, the girls did some online research and brainstormed about the mission and activities of our particular group.

Kern Kelley streamed live to us.

Video Conferencing

Before and during lunch our ninth graders visited Utah, Maine, and Chicago by teleconferencing with Steve Hargadon, Kern Kelley, Jason Markey.  These three esteemed educators shared their ideas about the formation of student tech groups such as ours.  Kern's description of the Tech Sherpas was particularly helpful.

Taylor shares her group's ideas.

Plotting a Game Plan
The girls came up with the following consensus on the types of activities they would explore and develop:

• Tech Support
• Live streaming events
• After school drop in sessions
• Screencasted tutorials
• Blog posts with tech tips and advice
• Advocacy
• Help with tech orientation for new students
• Co-teach with orientation leaders
• Weekly tech tips in a blog, on twitter and other social media
• Skits, commercials, and movie trailers around tech use  and being a good  digital citizen
• Promote informal use of tech  outside of school
• Communication
• internal
• external
• Geek spirit
• Advisory
• Communicate with faculty and ststaff  about issues of coincern
• social media
• apps
• procedures

Ms. Smith shares a comment while Wizards work on the Ning

Building the Ning
The group spent considerable time discussing the platform for future online collaboration. Drawing on Lucy's rich experience in social media we decided on a Ning.  

For the last hour of our day together, the group went to Mercy's new iMac lab to work on building the Ning. The Ning is ideal for the group, because it is private, serves as a marvelous place to store media and conduct discussions. The girls also joined task forces on the Ning

Throughout the day I took advantage of my relatively passive role to take pictures and record video about the wizards and other Mercy 2.0 matters.  

Without a doubt, November 30, 2012, was one of my favorite all-time days at Mercy. 

iPads, YouTube, and Swiss Railway Clocks

What the iPad Has Done to Education 

http://tinyurl.com/ccpz8py

While opinions on the iPad are not unanimous (little in education is), its ability to bridge the gap between the classroom and home, hardware and software, and learner and content is considerable.
http://tinyurl.com/8lv44q7

YouTube brings interactive quizzes to videos with Questions Editor beta
Feel like something's missing from your YouTube viewing experience -- like some good 'ol multiple-choice questions? The chronic learners among us will be happy to hear that the site is testing an interactive -- and potentially educational -- feature that lets users add quizzes to their clips.
http://tinyurl.com/8jnz9rt

Content Curation Primer
People and organizations are now making and sharing media and content all over the social web.   For example, onFacebook the average user creates 90 pieces of content each month.  If you multiply that by the 800 million Facebook users,  it isn’t surprising that  data or content on the Internet is  measured in exabytes, or billions of gigabytes.      Simply put, we are living an era of content abundance.     A content curator offers high value to anyone looking for quality content because finding that information (and making sense of it) requires more and more time, attention, and focus.

http://tinyurl.com/3jcnyja

Why Kids Need Schools to Change
The current structure of the school day is obsolete, most would agree. Created during the Industrial Age, the assembly line system we have in place now has little relevance to what we know kids actually need to thrive.
Most of us know this, and yet making room for the huge shift in the system that’s necessary has been difficult, if not impossible because of fear of the unknown, says educator Madeline Levine,author of Teach Your Children Well.

http://tinyurl.com/chtvkg8

Swiss Rail Claims Apple Copied Its Iconic Clocks. 
Switzerland's national rail company accused Apple Inc. on Friday of stealing the iconic look of its station clocks for the iOS 6 operating system used by iPhone and iPad mobile devices.
http://tinyurl.com/bnqzwj4

12 Most Judicious Ways to Learn Online
Do you consider yourself a life long learner? Well, I think we all are — even if we don’t identify it that way. As we grow older and mature, we learn new skills associated with work and hobbies. We become better communicators and deepen our social bonds. Studies have shown that self motivated learning is a key factor in overall well being.
If you have ever wanted to tackle a new field, there are plenty of online resources for you to check out
http://tinyurl.com/bpzamlq

What I've Been Reading about Apple TVs, Evernote, Dropbox, and More

Apple TV in the Classroom-- the New Smartboard

The use of the Apple TV in combination with an iPad in the instructor’s hand provides a mobile platform from which classroom activities can be initiated. Through the use of several apps, teachers can provide notes, display steps and processes to problems, initiate the display of media (pausing and resuming as needed from any location in the classroom), and allow students to participate from their own seats in a variety of interactive activities.   http://tinyurl.com/8xzcmd3

What We Learned: A 1:1 iPad Reflection

When you unfold such a large-scale initiative as giving every student an iPad, you tend to overthink everything. We tried to avoid this, but it was inevitable.   http://tinyurl.com/9ttqzqx

Discovery Invests in Digital Textbooks in Hopes of Growth 

Mr. Goodwyn’s 200-employee division introduced the line of digital textbooks last year. Their cloud-based technology works with whatever hardware a district has — iPads, laptops, desktops. Discovery tailors them to the particular curriculum needs of various states (or districts within states).  http://tinyurl.com/8rua7cr

Evernote: A 0-to-60 MPH Guide

Evernote is many things to many people because it’s so powerful. But for the same reason, Evernote’s purpose is vague enough that it can be hard to get started with it. First, you have to figure out what it can do for you. Here’s a guide to how to think about Evernote, so you can get better at using it.  http://tinyurl.com/8ew4h4a

Dropbox Storage Upgrades Take A Swing At iCloud And Google Drive 

The upgrades look like Dropbox is starting to fire off a competitive salvo at Google Drive and iCloud. For comparison, iCloud offers 55GB of storage space for $100 per year, whereas a Dropbox customer can get 102GB for around $120 per year. However, it still looks like Google Drive customers are getting the best deal as they can secure 100GB of storage space (+25GB GMail storage) for $4.99 per month or around $60 per year.

http://tinyurl.com/9uy8yua

The story behind how Apple’s iCloud data center got built — Cleantech News and Analysis

Apple’s new $1 billion data center — one of the highest-profile new data centers in the world — has put the town of Maiden, North Carolina (population: just over 3,000) on the tech map. But it almost didn’t get built.  http://tinyurl.com/bt64g2t

by SodaHead.Browse more data visualization.

Quick Impressions of Mercy 2.0 and the iPad Deployment

Vector portrait credit to credit to Vectorportal.com

Here is a quick, narrow take on how Mercy 2.0 is going three days into the new school year:

The Good

* The iPads' mobility and battery life impress, but the connectivity throughout the school stands out as a biggest technical strength.

* We have experienced fewer mechanical and log-in issues than the past.

* Staff has been patient and collaborative about trouble-shooting.

* The Apple TVs allow the teachers untethered access to their projectors.

* Teachers from various departments have told me of terrific apps that they have found for their students.

* Two new teachers told me, today, that they love their iPads.

The Bad

*I can't believe that Apple provided us with cheap batteries in the wireless keyboards that came with our 26 iMacs.  They did not make it to the start of school!  

*I wish we had done more training on classroom workflow with the iPads, perhaps even if it meant we spent less time exploring apps.  Getting documents to Moodle is a bit tricky with the iPad.

*I am bewildered by how many of my seniors haven't even brought their HPs to my AP class even though the entire experience has been paperless thus far.  This goes to show that the we sometimes give the young a bit too much credit for being digital natives.

*I have had my own connection troubles with the Apple TV I am using.  But I attribute this to my own failure to test out the equipment more thoroughly.  I am really looking forward to taking advantage of the technology.  But like my colleagues I have found my own little stumbling block with Mercy 2.0.

The Ugly

* I am thinking some pretty dark thoughts about some of our digital publishers.  As we try eagerly to take advantage of their resources, some have put ridiculous technical and policy obstacles in the way of our families as they try to acquire instructional materials.  It is frustrating for IT, teachers, and especially our parents when we all try to get our students fully prepared for the beginning of school.  We've learned a couple of lessons about our own process of informing parents, but I truly can say that sone of our math and  science students have really been done wrong by the publishers.

Mercy iPad In-Service August, 2012

We have set up a very special professional day for our staff, today. The focus will be on integration our iPads into the Curriculum. In fact the general keynote presentation will be titled, "Retrofitting the Classroom for the iPad. Cheryl Davis will be coming from the San Francisco Bay area to deliver her presentation and two other elective workshops Lucy Gray of Chicago has guided us in developing the in-service event. She will also be presenting workshops as will three of our own talented staff members-- Anne Eddy, Susan Smith, and Alison Kline-Kator. Each Mercy staff member will experience three of the following workshops:

Book Creation on the iPad

Collaborative Tools for Notetaking and Mindmapping

Creating Video

Exploring Instructional Uses of YouTube

iPads in the Moodle Environment

iTunes U Content and Courses

The In-Service will be a paperless experience. Lucy has helped us build a public Google Site in the interest of making our efforts transparent and helpful to the greater educational community. Feel free to visit it:

Mercy High School Professional Development

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Screen Shot from one of Cheryl's Workshop web pages

The President's iPad and Other Matters

"The president not only approves of his television ads, as federal election law requires him to say in each commercial, he also screens many of them in advance, either on his iPad or during a regular Sunday evening meeting with political advisers at the White House." - Jeff Zeleny

"As schooling becomes more 'personalized' through technology (and it will), our articulated value will have to change away from content delivery and more to a focus on the learning process. Still up for debate for me is to what extent to which that human input is done face to face or virtually." - Will Richardson

"Here's the problem with incrementalism in a time of breakdown: it's a bit like asking a mechanic to tune up your tasseled loafers for your pioneering voyage to the edges of interstellar space. Sure, you can wear your tasseled loafers, incrementalists of the universe. But make no mistake: if it's the tired realm of the clapped out possible you wish to take a quantum leap beyond, you're going to need a rocket ship." - Umir Haque

"Web-enabled cellphones and tablets are creating vast new possibilities to bring high-quality, low-cost education to every community college and public school so people can afford to acquire the skills to learn 21st-century jobs. Cloud computing is giving anyone with a creative spark cheap, powerful tools to start a company with very little money. And dramatically low interest rates mean we can borrow to build new infrastructure — and make money." -- Anonymous New York Times poster from Petoskey, MI.

"Intractable educational problems will begin to disappear when learners’ rear ends are gotten off school furniture and allowed out where life is being lived, when learners’ eyes are lifted from reference works passed off as textbooks and directed to the real world, when learners’ minds are respected too much to treat them as mere storage units for secondhand, bureaucratically selected information." - Valerie Strauss

"The social and economic world of today and tomorrow require people who can critically and creatively work in teams to solve problems. Technology widens the spectrum of how individuals and teams can access, construct and communicate knowledge. Education, for the most part, isn’t creating learners along these lines. Meanwhile, computers are challenging the legitimacy of expert-driven knowledge, i.e., of the teacher at the front of the classroom being the authority. All computing devices — from laptops to tablets to smartphones — are dismantling knowledge silos and are therefore transforming the role of a teacher into something that is more of a facilitator and coach." - Arin Lavasseur

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Photo from http://abcnews.go.com/images/Technology/gty_obama_ipad_jef_120216_wblog.jpg

Lightening Student Book Bags at Last

Today we took a long step toward lightening book bags.  This is a stealth feature of Mercy 2.0.  The textbook world has been one of the last hold outs against the movement toward digital media.  As more and more classroom resources become available in digital form, Mercy wants to bring it into our students' iPads and laptops.  Consequently, our talented Media Center technician, Cheryl Corte, took on the thankless task of collecting book information of all varieties from our academic departments.  Teachers contributed in a major way, researching the various formats of their assigned materials.  Cheryl took these submissions and combed through them, so that parents could have this information in a uniform, (somewhat) reader-friendly way.

Screen Capture of our Book Purchasing Web Page

We know that the information is a little overwhelming.  But we decided that the best favor we could do for families is supply them with information and let them decide which formats best suited their daughters and pocketbooks.  Just as our computing environment will be mixed (HP tablet & Apple iPad), so too will our book environment.  As the publishing industry evolves, Mercy will attempt to stay at the digital forefront of the change.

While we are frustrated that not all texts are available in digital form, a family that wants to leap forward in that direction (saving some money as they do!), will now be able to do so with considerable Mercy's assistant.

Some facts about this program:

- At Mercy, all incoming students purchase an iPad and their own books.  Of course the iPads do not come pre-loaded with books she needs for her unique schedule anymore than a computer purchase includes lots of your favorite free music and movies, preloaded.

- Mercy is platform neutral both in terms of device and books.  Teachers expect to work in mixed environments for the next three years.

- We are eager to go paperless, but not in ways that will be detrimental to learning.  However, we are continually looking for ways to use our technology to greater educational, social, and economic advantage.

Here is link to the Mercy Master Book List:     http://mhsmi.org/sites/default/files/curriculum/mercy_master_booklist_080112.pdf

Our iPad Orientations Move on Apace!

T

IT Director, Tom James (center) leads 31 students through their iPad Orientation

Today, Tom James (IT Director) and Gary Bank (Network Administrator helped 31 students set up their iPads at an iPad orientation. These sessions are required of students when they pick up their new iPads.

Tom and Gary show the students the basic functions of their iPads and cover. They explain the AppleCare+ warranty. They then get them logged into the Mercy network and registered with Apple ID so that we can deploy their apps to them.

The students are then sent on their ways to play with the iPads until school starts. On August 24, ninth graders and transfer students will get a very detailed hands-on orientation to Mercy technology-- a vital, growing feature of our curriculum