If you give a school a principal with a technology vision, technology will become a priority.

If you make technology a priority, you will find a way to fund the new technology.

If you find a way to fund the new technology, every student at your school will have access to the newest, most efficient and dynamic technology available.

If you give every student at the school access to the most dynamic technology out there, it is bound to fail.

After reading through some of Dan Meyer's blog posts, I became inspired.  Dan is a genius when it comes to mathematics education and integrating real-world scenarios into his lessons.  As a way to challenge myself and my groups of 8th grade Algebra students, I took the approach of "Be less helpful" and ran with it.

The problem that was posed to the class was this:
"How much money would you have to make in order to turn a profit as a pumpkin farmer?"
and
"How many pumpkins would you need to sell in order to make this happen?"

My district just opened up a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) network and they are allowing us to voluntarily bring in our iPads, laptops, cell phones, and other devices that connect to the district wi-fi network.  We are not the only district rolling this out to the eager staff, so it would be helpful to share the experiences of a 1 iPad classroom.

As a group, we recently had an opportunity to be a part of an incredible wave of information coming forward about the Common Core Standards and how they would be implemented in the classroom.  As iPad advocates and users, we were thinking that this would be the perfect way to get a ton of apps for our website that we could share with everyone.  However, something more happened - we learned.

I’m a big fan of martial arts, and even though I don’t have any moves of my own, I am working hard to develop the ninja frame of mind.  Aside from being potentially useful in dark school parking lots and deserted copy rooms, ninja skills have plenty of other real world applications.  In the case of this blog post: classroom management.

Through the recommendation of a colleague, I discovered Classroom Dojo, which is a super effective online management system that not only made me want to watch The Karate Kid on Hulu, but also try out the Dojo mojo in my own classroom. 

On ClassDojo, teachers can input student names and easily chart the positive and negative behaviors of each child.  Because I already utilize an individualized classroom economy, I decided to input groups of students. 

My decision to enter seating groups into Dojo worked out well for two reasons.  First, it was a whole lot less work to input eight names instead of ninety, and second, collaborative activities can be the most difficult to manage.  Some teachers have quiet classrooms, but not me.  Learning to accomplish tasks and effectively communicate with peers is a major part of the Common Core standards, not to mention an important life skill.  As Karate Kid’s Mr. Miyagi once said, “Lesson is for whole life. When whole life have balance, everything be better.”  See?  Smart man.

Another school year is about to begin in Palm Springs Unified, and we've spent the past two days enjoying various forms of staff development.  This morning at our district kick-off, it was revealed that our district has decided to implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) network that will be made accessible to teachers and students.  Our reaction?  Finally!

With the impending advent of an open network and the sudden ability to increase the amount of technology in our classrooms, one of the first practical uses of BYOD is being able to use QR codes and with greater frequency and effectiveness.  So, let's talk about QR codes and I'll take this opportunity to also practice my colloquial middle schooler speech in preparation for the first day of school...

One of the most persistent reasons that I hear for why some teachers choose NOT to implement mobile technology is that whatever task they are asking students to do can be done using more traditional methods.  As one colleague casually mentioned to me recently, “The iPad isn’t offering anything that I can’t have my students do using a pencil and paper.”