• Get inside the games with Google
• Official Vancouver Olympic site
• Google Earth Olympic file (can be downloaded from this site)
• Winter Olympic Education resources

In 2008 the Pew Internet & American Life reported on a study that found

• Game playing is universal, with almost all teens playing games and at least half playing games on a given day.
• 97% of American teens ages 12-17 play some kind of video game.
• 99% of boys say they are gamers and 94% of girls report that they play games.

Gaming is a ubiquitous part of this generation.  So I was excited to read that the World of Warcraft, arguably one of the most popular MUVE game of kids is being used by schools to explore literacy, math, writing, digital citizenship, and 21st century skills.  Suffren Middle School in Suffren NY is a leader in this endeavor and it is exciting to see them engaging students in a learning medium that will continue to have a growing presence in their lives.

The presentation slides above contain links to some of the sites that they will be able to utilize once their network infrastructure is completed this summer.

This new network does have important caveats that we all need to be cognizant of.  This network is met to maximize bandwidth and connectivity for teachers and students.  This is not meant to be a public wireless network, like one might find at a coffeehouse.

• We are ONLY running 802.11N over “A” 5ghz . We have turned off all 2.4Ghz B and G radios.
• We have one Wireless Network called “Fairport Schools”
• We have only allowed the X200 teacher laptops and Mobile Labs access to the network at this time.
• We have no guest Wireless enabled anywhere, nor have we let any other piece of hardware other than and X200 on this network.
• We  see a LIVE view of every connected wireless device. This provides a high level of technical detail that will be beneficial in troubleshooting and maintaining quality wireless services.
• We will  bring up guest services after we have a proven, successful district wide structure that fully supports the difficult demands of the high density mobile classroom.

Major kudos to Ross Ciulla, Tom Devitt, John Poland, Jason Scott, and Brett Provenzano for their significant contributions to this project.

Photo by C Haglund

Earlier this year Google Wave got a lot of attention when it was introduced to the web.  There was quite a but of buzz and speculation about this being a “really big deal”, but after using it for a few months I understand why this excitement has cooled off as it is nothing more than a portal type dashboard to existing technologies.

While somewhat disappointed with Google Wave, I am very excited about the new paradigm that Google Chrome OS presents.  This is a operating system that allows someone to be on the Internet in 7 seconds from pressing the “on” button of a computer.  This OS goes right to the cloud and does not go through the laborious and lengthy start-up that Apples and PCs put their users through.  There is a good YouTube video on this OS

An important part of our visionary framework is to have technology that is web accessible.  This places an emphasis of putting our instructional resources in the cloud for students so that they can access their resources on any web accessible device.  Today it takes about 75 seconds for a student to turn on a computer and access the Internet.  Using Google Chrome OS students could shave 68 seconds off this time.  Assume a student does this 100 times in the year, that fress-up  6800 seconds for the student that other would have been spent staring at a screen waiting for the computer to startup.

In other words, we are trying to provide powerful tools that empower teachers with important student data in a time efficient manner which will also equate into improving student learning.

To get started, go to SchoolTube.com to register. When asked what school/organization you belong to, type in Fairport and select Fairport Central School District. Below is Mike Fortner’s final TVT video:

For more Fairport videos, visit our Fairport SchoolTube channel.

A second reason is that classrooms of students, with different reading levels, can read the same titled book, but at a reading level of which matches each respective student. For example, if a class of 20 11th grade social studies students were to read George Orwell’s book 1984. In this class are two students who are reading at a 6th grade level. The teacher, with 20 eReaders could have 18 students read the book 1984 as George Orwell wrote it and the other 2 could read a version written at the 6th grade level. In this manner the students can all learn and discuss the implications of “Big Brother”, “newspeak” and “doublethink“.

A third reason is the new dense wireless network in the libraries throughout the district. These environments are very suitable for such initiatives as Google books where it would only take a few seconds for a student in the library with eReader to download a book.

The market is changing rapidly on eReaders. The TVT group is exploring iPod Touches now. We will also bhe looking at enTourage eDGe™ and the Sony Reader Daily Edition because of their wireless features.