We have made important strides in that direction through motivated staff, school administration which has fostered technology use, and our school designated technology “guru”, Bob Simpson, who has helped us coordinate our resources, led tech related professional development for staff, guided us through public and corporate grant opportunities, and now is promoting what we hope will turn into a school wide WEB 2.0 mentality.

In recent years, however, we have been slowed by an aging computer population. As our computer skills and interest in digital media/communication have increased, our decade old “granddaddy” desktops, running Windows 98 (first edition), have not just made execution of our plans an issue, but have dampened staff and student motivation. Many student classroom computers sat encrusted in a layer of dust, used and unloved.

I prayed to the “Computer Gods” for years for deliverance from our sorry desktop state…and recently my prayers were answered. We all left for April vacation and returned to a school desktop wonderland. My lab, which was becoming a computer graveyard, was transformed into a stable of healthy young Dells, ready to run fast and free.  All classrooms underwent a similar transformation. We were back! We were once again “the technology school”. The excitement from staff and students was palpable.

I truly see 2009-2010 as Ferryway’s walk on the WEB 2.0 “wild side”: wikis, blogs, homework and assignments crisscrossing the network, drop boxes, and vastly enhanced cooperation in our digital universe. We now have the technology in place to more effectively make use of our award winning teacher created online educational units and to roll out a comprehensive digital school community. What a difference a day and a Dell make.

As the workshop instructor, I have a long history of collaboratively working with teachers to develop curriculum projects that use technology.  In fact, I’ve been in the Malden Public Schools since 1999 managing a number of federal, state, and non-profit grant projects to help teachers effectively engage their students with technology.   I have a strong belief that technology integration can produce gains in student achievement when it fits seamlessly into the curriculum.

Our first workshop was well attended by sixteen teachers and Ferryway principal, Tom DeVito.  Each teacher used an HP tablet computer (model tc4200) from the school’s laptop cart.  Teachers were able to logon and connect wirelessly to the Internet.  Here are some major highlights:

• Registered for a free teacher account on wikispaces.com
• Tried to view the Ferryway school Edublogs site.  Unfortunately, Edublogs was having major service interruptions due to a major site upgrade that had occurred over the weekend.  We will revisit this in our second workshop.
• Learned about embedded media by viewing slideshare.com, a slide presentation sharing site.
• Watched a short streaming movie on wikis produced by Common Craft.  These innovative movies use stop motion animation techniques to teach about technology tools.  Our student can create these types of movies using the Adobe Digital School Collection.
• Examined examples of Web 2.0 in education.  Teachers expressed interest in partnering Ferryway students with international classrooms.  The flatclassroom.com project is a good model.
• Introduced podcasting and recommended using wikispaces as a first step.
• Completed a short workshop evaluation survey.

Teachers actively responded to questions embedded in the presentation through the Qwizdom student response system.  Each teacher used a remote control to make selections that were then sent wirelessly for tabulation.  About 90% of Ferryway teachers have never used a response system.  The right-hand image shows that 52% of teachers correctly thought that Ferryway students reported only used a computer once per week last school year.  The Ferryway school will have a total of three systems to use this year.  Qwizdom will be used to make classroom instruction more interactive and improve real-time assessment.  Teachers liked the idea that every student could have their response recorded and then the data could be shared for whole class discussion.

Another exciting announcement was the launch of the Ferryway 2.0 on-demand learning site.  Ferryway 2.0 uses Adobe’s Connect Pro system for uploading and sharing digital media content.  You can view an interactive Flash version of the orientation presentation.  Some benefits of the on-demand system are that teachers are able to receive training any time and they can also develop interactive student lessons.