Week #6

This week we had Kelli Boklaschuk from Brandon School Division BSD Communications & IT in as a guest speaker. I haven’t had a placement in BSD since my first one so I didn’t have as many qualms with their IT terms as some of my fellow students. My quickly approaching next and final placement is in BSD however so this was a well timed presentation. No gmail access in the school? Ack! But a lot of their reasons to go with Microsoft as their platform do make sense.  I thought it was interesting that BSD had an end goal of 1:1 computing when so many of my fellow student teachers have been hitting technological road blocks in their bsd placements. Kelli’s point that the end goal should not be 1:1 computing but personalized learning made sense as a broader blanket goal that I think should come before 1:1 computing. The most useful thing I saw in the presentation was the social media project proposal. At first glance it seemed tedious, but once explained it seemed a lot more user friendly. I have already been thinking of a number of projects I could do in my placement that might include social media, so that I would need to fill out this form well in advance is good to know. After the previous weeks 1:1 presentation that had me thinking about giving the students so much choice in the media they present their knowledge, I am interested to see how this would work with the forms. If I tell students they can use what they want to present their knowledge, then I wonder how can I foresee so far in advance what social media I need to propose.