Thursday, 20 April 2006
Visited Palma Sola Elementary School, Tampa this morning. Tampa is approximately 40 minute flight from Miami. The school is in a medium income community with approximately 500 students. At the office they had an electronic check in system for visitors, volunteers and workers on site which they lease annually from School Check In - School Front Office Management System. They use an old laptop and Dymo printers.
The school has been involved in the 1:1 laptop program for staff and students for the past 3 years. They had applied for a State Grant for the program for which they were successful with a small number of other schools in the Manatee District involving both elementary and secondary schools. The program involves 5500 laptops across the District. They schools had a choice of platforms, Mac or PC, however all choose Mac. In their view the Mac’s required no additionally software for students.
The students we visited were very proud of their skills and integration of the curriculum into their learning. One class was planning a visit to a theme park which had a roller coaster and so were researching the history and science behind roller coasters. The teacher had constructed a set of ‘approved’ websites for students to view and report ... More to follow. Have to get on anther plane! Leaving Tampa.
The students we observed were using the internet within the district/school intranet, Inspiration, iMovie and GarageBand for music and Keynote presentation tool. All classes we visited had a projector where students showed their work and was ‘graded’ by the teacher. The grade matched a known assessment matrix . This included the knowledge presented in product, the presentation to peers, participation in a team when working in groups, involvement when others present their work to the class. It was ABC’s!
There are big issues to conform with the Federal Child Protection Act, so although the students could take the computer home, they couldn’t connect to any internet service while at home. The teachers say this as a significant issue and a waste of the potential use of the computer while at home.
The students pay $35 annually for maintenance and 50% of costs if the iBook was damaged. This occurred much more in the secondary school than in elementary.
