Backyard

I visited CBHS Liverpool (Matt Wells is the guy running the ICT things there)  and Patrician Brothers’, Fairfield (James McFarland here) today because I wanted to get a feel for how the rollout was going on the ground. Both these schools have chosen macs; both used the CEO image and the kids have Adm rights; neither school has (yet) a macserv in place so the laptops simply authenticate to the wireless and if the kids need the server they map a drive to their server home.

At Liverpool the kids don’t have their external HDD just yet and are backing up to the server while at Fairfield they are using the HDD.

There have been only very minor issues and things are working really well. The wireless seems to be coping fine and everyone is smiling!! The internet is very much another thing ….(c’mon Kevin!)

In the classrooms the first thing that strikes you (both are boys schools) is the engagement. There is no “mucking up” – I’m not saying they are angels but all the eyes are headed in essentially the one place!! I know the purists will sneer at this demanding much more in the way of engagement that this and I agree, but anyone who has taught lots of Year 9 boys will notice this straight away and that is a HUUUUUGE plus!

Comments from the kids include: “It is great, I can type faster than I can write and all my stuff is in the one place”, “It is great being able to search for stuff right here and now and not have to wait to go to the lab”, “I’ve got most of my textbooks on this now so my bag is lighter”, “They are pretty cool!”.

My initial observation (not meant as a criticism just a reality) was that there is not very much multimedia stuff showing. A lot of what kids had stored in subject files was text (although don’t underestimate the value of neatly arranged text in a boy’s work!!). Several groups were working from a question on the board and writing a response. Keynote was about as flashy as it got, but we all know the PD is our challenge for the next few years! Both schools had enabled iChat and, while the kids knew it could be fun, it wasn’t a huge problem and in fact was being excellently used at Liverpool for communication between teachers, kids and the “helpdesk” (aka Matt!).

Liverpool teachers were having a “mac” (as in Macintosh not McDonalds) breakfast when I arrived. A user group sharing tips and ideas on Garageband this week. The enthusiasm and committment was great to see.

I left both schools very encouraged although not completely surprised as I have often seen the commitment and enthusiasm of our teachers for improvements before this. I was however very, very aware of the huge PD task that lies ahead of us all as we move realistically towards being 21st Century teachers. Perhaps we need to borrow Barack Obama’s challenge to the USA “Yes we can! Yes we can!”