It has been a crazy summer! I’ve been very busy with conferences, workshops, and more, but it has been great fun learning new things, connecting with old friends, and making new ones. There are still more events to come – next week starts the trifecta of Edcamps: Edcamp Leadership on Monday, Edcamp STEAM on Tuesday, and Padcamp on Thursday. I can’t wait!
I’ve also been very busy here at school. I’ve been updating all of the iPad carts, working on tutorials and presentations, and moving computer labs around. We have some very exciting things planned for this school year!
The biggest news is that we will be going 1:1 Chromebooks this year with grades 3-6. I am extremely excited about this initiative, and I think it will be wonderful for our students. We had a few classrooms pilot Chromebooks this past year, and they raved about them. We are hoping to have the Chromebooks delivered sometime between October and December.
This year we will also be moving all staff over to Google Apps For Education. This free, web based tool will replace MS Office for our staff. This move will save a ton of money, and also make sharing and collaborating on documents a breeze. Students have been using GAFE for a while now, and with the upcoming Google Classroom release this fall it should make the workflow between teachers and students a lot smoother.
My personal favorite, however, is the redesign of the computer lab into a STEM lab. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. I am planning to create a very flexible space that can be rearranged to suit a variety of projects and activities. Look for more news about the STEM lab in future posts.
The end of the summer is fast approaching, and I cannot wait for all of the exciting new tools and initiatives!
