Session 7

I just submitted my portfolio and I definitely feel excited about being done. Overall, I think this was a really great experience for me, especially in establishing professional relationships with some of the other members of the class. I know that I'm going to have more ideas about reflection in the next few weeks, but in the meantime my overall feeling is one of relief.

Session 6: almost finished!

Wow, the last two weeks have been super stressful as far as this class is concerned. My school ended earlier than most schools in Vermont, so the two weeks of session 6 was the last 2 weeks of school. I was glad to see that we would be looking in-depth at Acceptable Use Policies; I've been spending some time beating my head against a wall trying to make changes to our current AUP. As a colleague explained to me, it seems like the school's lawyers would like nothing more than to wrap the children in bubble wrap and seal the school from any possible technological changes. I have several administrators on my side and I think that we've made a compromise on where "personal electronic devices" can be used and the ways in which they can be used. Of course, since the lawyers have not yet approved the changes, it's still an informal compromise. But at least it's in the right direction.

As for equitable access, that's a problem that I've been struggling with all year. More than half of our students qualify for free meals at the school, which tells something about our poverty levels in the Northeast Kingdom. Many of these students don't have access to computers and/or Internet. The Director of Technology and I have been discussing this problem and we're tentatively looking at starting a 1:1 program with Google's new Chromebooks, which work solely on the cloud and can connect with 3G capabilities. This might be a solution to our digital divide.