12.26.2012 Update and public meeting dates

We shared an overview of the information from our transformational technology task forces at the December 10 Board of Education Meeting. Below is the video from the meeting. You can fast forward to 109:15 of the video to view the report:

We have also scheduled a series of four public meetings in January about the transformational technology project. 

Task Force Report and Feedback Sessions

Task force report and feedback sessions will be held in the Northfield Middle School media center on Saturday, January 5 (10 am - 12 pm) and Monday, January 7 (7 pm - 9 pm.) These sessions will focus on sharing what has been learned over the last several months through our task force work as well as key recommendations from those task forces. We will ask those who attend the meeting to work in small groups to discuss some of the concepts presented. The goal of these meetings is to engage in discussion with the community prior to formalizing the proposal for a potential student initiative to be presented at the January 28 Board of Education meeting. This proposal will be focused on which grade levels are recommended to begin using iPad tablet computers at the beginning of the 2013-14 school year.

Proposal Feedback Sessions

The second set of meetings will be held on Saturday, February 2 (10 am - 12 pm) and Monday, February 4 (7 pm - 9 pm) in the Northfield High School auditorium. These sessions will provide the details of the proposal for a potential student iPad tablet computer implementation for the 2013-14 school year. The community will have an opportunity to hear the proposal and ask questions about it.

In the mean time if you have questions about the status of the project, don't hesitate to contact Matt Hillmann, Director of Human Resources and Technology, at (507) 645-3458 or by email at matt.hillmann@nfld.k12.mn.us.

Update 12.7.2012

Our project is entering a critical phase this week -- the initial round of task force meetings have completed and we are preparing status reports on their work for the Board of Education meeting on Monday evening. We will provide a report on the following transformational technology task forces:

• App and Content selection
• Communication
• Policy and Procedure
• Professional Development

We'll also share our progress in working through some of the details in regards to long-term financing of a potential student initiative as well as some of the technical steps we have or plan to take in order to support such a possible implementation.

iPad Minute segments

We have also continued with our "iPad Minute" segment at Board meetings. Below is video from the November 26 Board meeting. This presentation focused on how Grade 7 Life Science teachers using a virtual frog dissection app with their students. The segment begins at the 98:58 mark:

We also had an "iPad Minute" segment at the November 13 Board Meeting. It featured Greenvale Park teacher Tony Seidl leading a professional development session on using Science apps on his iPad. The segment begins at  70:03 mark of the video.
Student Technology Advisory Council
One of the best events I've been involved with the transformational technology initiative has been working with our student focus groups. Our high school student technology advisory council met last Wednesday and was very enjoyable. We had students discuss their views on appropriate consequences for misusing an iPad in a 1:1 environment - as adults, our initial thought is to take the device away for misuse. However, a 1:1 environment means that the student relies on the device for much of their academic work - taking the device away isn't very practicable. They discussed limiting student privileges on their device as well as other measures. I love seeing teenagers talk through these kinds of situations in a group setting. They often have more keen insight as to what motivates students than we do as adults. We also had these students provide reaction to the iPad Mini as a potential student device. Thanks to High School Media Specialists Rebecca Glassing and Julie Wolner for orchestrating the student technology advisory council!
Preparing the proposal
Our District Technology Steering Committee also meets today to put together the core of our proposal for potential student initiative. Their work will be passed on to the Superintendent's Cabinet, who will put the final touches on the proposal that will be presented to the Board of Education in late January.

Update 11.8.2012

The progress of our transformational technology project continues to move forward! Here are some key events from the last few weeks:

• Continued professional development: Our buildings are hosting (almost) weekly trainings on site. These sessions are now mostly being conducted by teachers at each building. Greenvale Park Grade 3 teacher Tony Seidl share a number of science-related apps with colleagues last Friday. My favorite was SciFri - an app that has a number of science resources based on the National Public Radio Science Friday program. Sibley Elementary's Grade 3 teacher Katie Morris shared more information on Notability with her colleagues this past Tuesday morning. Each week we continue to build the capacity of our staff when it comes to understanding apps and how they can support professional efficiency and student learning.

• Task forces: We had two great task force meetings last week! Our content and apps selection group worked with rubrics and checklists from Learning in Hand. They also reviewed how the current curriculum review process can adapt to evaluate digital textbooks. Our policy and procedures task force made great progress in developing our draft iPad Student Guide! We have been basing our work on the success of other districts in the region while adapting the documents to our local needs.

• Our district technology steering committee met last Friday and began the process of debating what grade levels could benefit the most from tablet computers and what an implementation at various grade levels might look like. Their work will form the basis of the recommendation we'll make to the School Board in January.

• We got our hands on an iPad Mini and are evaluating whether or not this might be an effective option for our students. The general reaction has been positive about this device. We've been sharing it with teachers and  were able to ask some Northfield Middle School students their initial impressions of the iPad Mini vs. the bigger iPad 2 that our teaching staff is using this year - again with positive first impressions. We'll continue to discuss this in the coming month.

We also have continued our iPad Minute segment at School Board Meetings. The video below is from the October 22nd Board meeting. The iPad Minute segment begins at 62:10 mark.

Update 10.13.12

This past week, we shared the decision making timeline for determining a potential student iPad implementation for the 2013-14 school year.

While we have quite a distance to go before presenting a recommendation to the Board of Education, the deliberate approach we are taking is allowing us time to consider a number of different issues without having to rush the discussions.

You can view the timeline by clicking here. Below is video from Monday's School Board meeting where the timeline was presented. The presentation begins at approximately the seven (7) minute) mark of the video.

Our task forces are meeting monthly, discussing and planning things like policy, procedures, professional development, rubrics for selecting digital instructional materials, among other topics.

Our District technology steering committee, comprised of teachers and administrators from across the District met last Thursday to review the status of our staff iPad project to this point and began transitioning to discussing what grade levels would be included in a potential student implementation.

We've also begun sharing an "iPad Minute" at Board meetings where staff members share the ways they are using their iPads in the classroom. This past Monday, I shared a video of art teachers Chris Holmquist and John Bade in a creative way that they are using iPad for instruction. The "iPad Minute" begins approximately at the 20 minute mark of the video above.

October 1, 2012 Update

The month of September continued to be a great learning experience as we begin to see the evolution of staff use of their iPads. We continue to offer training for staff and have transitioned from large group, centralized training like our Tech Boot Camp to targeted, on-site sessions at each building on a weekly basis - a total of 15 of these sessions were held in September. The training is moving toward building-specific needs. We have demonstrated the use of QuickOffice HD, ShowMe, talked about synchronizing calendars, and shown the process for mirroring the teacher's iPad to their classroom projector. General problem solving also takes place at these sessions -- it is an opportunity for teachers to gather and share the new things they are learning with one another.

Here are a handful of examples of how staff are using iPads in the first month of school.

• Our 7th grade science teachers have purchased a frog dissection simulation app and are preparing to implement this as a station for students to use during lab time in the coming months. They like the fact that the app they've selected allows students to make connections between the frog's biology and the human body.
• One physical therapist has used her iPad to record changes based on strategies she is using with her students. She writes "When students begin wearing new foot and ankle orthotics, the skin goes through an adjustment phase, which I can now easily document with a photo.  I also have taken movies of students’ walking patterns as baselines for this academic year." These things could have been completed before but using several different pieces of technology. The process becomes more seamless with the ability to integrate photos, video, and notes on one device.  
• One elementary teacher shared how the ability to take attendance on her iPad frees her SMART Board in the morning so that students can begin to interact with the "morning meeting" message on the SMART Board as soon as they walk in the door as opposed to waiting until after the teacher had taken attendance on her classroom computer. This makes a more fluid start to the school day. Even if just five minutes are saved per day, this equates to 14.5 hours per year that can be devoted to additional instruction!   
• We continue to see administrative tasks being moved to the iPad - for example, the continued movement toward sending meeting agendas and other documents ahead of time, saving significant paper.

We have been installing software that allows teachers to mirror their iPad on their classroom projector. The manner in which this can be done has really changed in the last several months - moving from the ability to use a VGA connector that is directly plugged into the projector to a low cost piece of software that will allow teachers to mirror their iPad screen to their classroom computer and onto their projector. We have chosen to use Reflection. It works for both PCs and Macintosh computers using Apple's AirPlay technology. It is lower cost -- $8 per license. In many cases, we need to add a wireless adapter to our PCs or update our Mac OS X software to be able to run the software. We have started slowly, piloting it in about a dozen classrooms to ensure reliability and adding more classrooms each day. The approach is significantly less expensive than using the AppleTV or other larger scale software.

Our task forces, charged at looking at areas associated with a potential student implementation for next school year, started their second round of meetings last week. Task forces tackled a number of other districts' policy and procedures in preparation for developing the policies and procedures that Northfield would use with any possible student usage. They also looked at possible methods to guide the larger-scale purchase of apps and digital textbooks.

We have also started an "iPad Minute" segment at each Board of Education meeting to highlight the ways our staff are using their devices for student instruction and professional efficiency. You can watch the "iPad Minute" segment from the 9/24/2012 Board of Education meeting by clicking here. The segment begins at the 55 minute mark of the video.

 

Workshop Week

We completed our "workshop week" on Thursday, which consists of a number of formal activities, professional development for teachers, as well as much needed time in classrooms as they prepare for the school year.

NHS staff use iPads during their photo scavenger hunt

The transformational technology plan was in full view during these workshops. We held two additional iPad I training sessions for staff who had not been able to attend yet. At this point, we have provided iPad I training for nearly 300 Northfield educators over 13 sessions!

In addition, we saw building principals leading the charge - using the devices for increased professional efficiency as many meeting agendas and materials were distributed electronically -- some as large as 42 pages. The saving in paper and the time needed to reproduce the materials for staff meetings is an important step forward. As staff see principals modeling this strategy, they will be able to foresee how they may do that with students should we choose to move forward with a student implementation.

A couple of well-conceived strategies were evident during Northfield High School's workshops. Staff used their iPads to simultaneously complete a building climate survey and were able to use the data in discussions about their school. Another activities required the use of the iPad's camera. Staff worked in teams completing a "scavenger hunt" to familiarize themselves with changes in the building at NHS. These activities are examples of how staff are learning to use the devices in a way that is accelerating their understanding of how they might have students use them in the future.

We also saw staff problem solving technology issues, which is an important opportunity for them! NHS staff took dozens of photos and videos during their scavenger hunt and then had to find an efficient way to get them off of the iPad and into a shared folder on our network. It isn't terribly efficient to email a large number of photos to yourself, though some staff teams went down that road and were successful. Since our PCs don't have iPhoto, we learned the iPad is recognized on a PC in a similar way to a USB flash drive and were able to copy and paste the photos/videos to the shared network folder. Other staff used their Dropbox accounts to synchronize photos with their PC. For tech-savvy folks, this may seem pedestrian, but it is the exact kind of problem solving that teachers do with their students. I was incredibly proud of how our NHS staff handled those issues and my understanding is that the photo slideshow that was shared later went very well.

We'll continue to highlight how staff use their iPads and the progress we make on our investigation of a potential student implementation. As of now, we are moving on the right path and we have a staff that has embraced this mobile technology even more than I had anticipated.

Update 8.11.2012

We completed the annual Tech Boot Camp a little more than one week ago and worked with more than 200 Northfield teachers to begin our transformational technology project. We offered two different iPad-oriented workshops over eight sessions. During the iPad I session, teachers:

• Checked out their iPad. We are using the Northfield High School library circulation software to maintain our inventory and track who has which device. Thanks to NHS Media Specialist Rebecca Glassing and district Technology Specialist Cindy Samuelson for their work in developing this process.
  
• Learned about the device itself, specifically about its operation. We practiced all sorts of techniques for efficient use of the device. This included using pinch-to-zoom, multi-touch gestures, using the different varieties of iPad keyboard layouts, and others. Much of the initial training focused on leveraging the context teachers currently have with their desktop computers. One example of this is comparing the iPad Safari web browser to Internet Explorer. While very simple, this illustrates how we tried to connect the new device to their current technology skills.

• Completed Apple ID registration. This was our biggest challenge! Some folks already had Apple IDs tied to their school email address and, at one point, Apple's servers didn't care for 50+ people trying to create IDs from a single location. At the end of the week, we had everyone registered with their ID. 

• Explored the built-in Apps, paying specific attention to the camera applications. Many teachers immediately made connections to how they would make use of this capacity with their students. For example, one teacher shared how she planned to project science lab experiment progress so the rest of the class could see how their classmates we approaching the lab. That probably isn't what Apple had in mind when it added a camera, but is certainly a logical thing to do - turn the iPad into a mobile document camera. Smart!
  
• Began looking at different productivity apps. The district purchased two apps for teachers -- Quick Office HD and Notability. Using our discount through the Apple Volume Purchasing Program, we secured 50% off on these two apps. 

During the iPad II session, we:

• Modeled some additional skills - such as how to use the keyboard more efficiently and how to get characters used in foreign language, such as the ñ, ü, é. These kinds of things are important to our foreign language and Compañeros program faculty.
  
• Provided in-depth training on Notability, one of the apps the district has purchased. This app, which cost 49 cents after our 50% discount, has the ability to take notes via typing and digital ink as well as the ability to record audio while taking notes. You can also insert photos from the iPad camera or web clips. It also allows the user to open a PDF document and annotate it.
  
• Performed live demonstrations of the built-in FaceTime video conferencing app. We've done a number of video conferences in the past using Skype in our classrooms. FaceTime makes that ability even easier and more user-friendly.
  
• Began sharing apps to change instruction -- such as ShowMe. Immediately our teachers began thinking of ways to use this free app - ranging from recording teacher demonstrations of skills to having students use the app while solving mathematical problems and asking them to narrate what they are doing. This would allow the teacher to "hear" as well as "see" the student's thought process and assist them in providing personalized instruction for that student.
  
• Broke into groups by grade level to begin discussing ways to use the device to modernize and personalize learning and researching apps that could fuel that goal. 

I want to extend my personal thanks to the following faculty and staff who assisted during our iPad sessions:

• Karl Viesselman, High School Math
• Rebecca Glassing, NHS Media Specialist
• Ann Hehr, Sibley Media Specialist
• Amanda Heinritz, Greenvale Park Media Specialist
• Nancy Antoine, Bridgewater Elementary Principal
• Matt Nohava, Middle School Workstation Specialist

Special thanks to Technology Specialist Cindy Samuelson for assisting with all eight iPad sessions!

We have scheduled additional iPad sessions for late August in order to accomodate faculty who couldn't make the Tech Boot Camp sessions. These workshops are scheduled for August 17, 20, and 24.

Tech Boot Camp wasn't all about iPads. We offered eight other sessions for teachers to hone their skills with other technology skills. All of these sessions were led by our own staff:

• Mark Thornton: Google Apps 
• Cindy Samuelson: Cornucopia of Web Apps
• Allison Otte: SMART Board
• Melissa Spitzack: SMART Board
• Danielle Amundson: SMART Board
• Eric Sandberg: Personal Learning Networks
• Curt Mikkelson: School Center (web page development software)
• Roger Jenni: Viewpoint (data warehouse)

Our next task involves getting our various task forces, looking even more deeply at possible student implementation, up and running. This week, we are meeting with our task forces surrounding:

• Content and app selection
• Policy and procedures
• Professional development
• Communication

We are off to a very good start with Tech Boot Camp and look to take that momentum to continue to move the project forward!

Tech Boot Camp -- here we go!

After a month of preparation and anticipation, we begin our training with staff this week. We have nearly 200 staff registered to attend this week and it is going to be excellent!

We have conducted a couple of "practice" trainings over the past couple of weeks to try and work out the agenda and pacing of the introductory three hour workshop. This proved worthwhile as we learned some things that will be very helpful as we move into training sessions with as many as 60 teachers involved.

Many thanks to Northfield High School Media Specialist Rebecca Glassing and Technology Specialist Cindy Samuelson for their work to inventory and prepare our iPads for distribution. Network Manager Nate Knutson has done a fantastic job of installing our new wireless solution and we are excited to see it handle these devices this week.

As I was preparing for the sessions this week, I came across former Tech Boot Camp schedules and documents. This will be the 17th Tech Boot Camp that I have had the fortune of leading across three school districts during my career. It is always a great week and it is clear proof that Northfield educators are life-long learners. This is such an important thing to model for students -- that learning is a continuous effort that should never end.

In addition to our iPad sessions, we are also offering workshops about using SMART Boards, Google Apps, personal learning networks, and others. You can see the entire list of offerings by clicking here. These workshops are all taught by our own teachers. Over the years, I have found colleagues teaching colleagues to be one of the most powerful professional development tools we have as a district. I am sure there will be challenges this week, but we will learn from them and move on.

So -- here we go!

Update 6.29.12

We've made some significant progress this week in our implementation planning! Our iPads arrived on Monday, which is awesome since we could get to work right away on developing our "intake" strategy. Special thanks to Northfield High School Media Specialist Rebecca Glassing and Technology Specialist Cindy Samuelson for their work on creating the inventory strategy we'll be using. Their careful planning is already paying off!

I have contacted our Transformational Technology Task Force members and am beginning to set up meetings for early August. In addition, this week we have had more than 70 teachers and other staff register for Tech Boot Camp and almost everyone of those for the iPad I and/or II training.

Keep those Tech Boot Camp registrations coming in!

Update 6.22.12

We received confirmation yesterday that our iPads have shipped and will hopefully arrive sometime next week. Once they arrive, staff will be tagging the devices and entering them into our inventory system. Thanks to our Rebecca Glassing, our awesome Northfield High School Media Specialist, the iPads will be entered into our Destiny management system so we can check them out to staff just like a book!

We also have scheduled our Tech Boot Camp sessions - this was sent to District staff today. The iPad sessions offered initially will be focused on the general use and operation of the iPad. We'll continue throughout the year with additional professional development - focusing more on teaching with the iPad rather than operating the iPad itself.

We've had 22 staff sign up for our task forces and will begin to set those meeting schedules next week.

One of the projects taking place this summer to support the transformational technology initiative is the improvement of our wireless networks. This week, we have some data cabling being installed to prepare for the addition of several higher density wireless devices at the Middle School and High School. This is an important component of this project that we hope to have completed in early August.

As always, let me know if you have any questions about the project. You can contact me by phone at (507) 645-3458 or by email at matt.hillmann@nfld.k12.mn.us.

Recent media coverage

Over the past week, there have been two newspaper articles and a radio interview that have covered our transformational technology project. I've shared them below:

• 6.12.2012 KYMN Radio with Jeff Johnson
• 6.9.2012 Northfield News article
• 6.6.2012 Northfield News article

Board approves Phase I

The School Board approved Phase I of our transformational technology project last evening. We now begin the process of ordering the equipment for staff and preparing training sessions for them. We'll also be setting up six task forces to get into even more detailed planning for our potential Phase II student implementation.

You can watch the Board meeting, shown below. The transformational technology discussion begins at 8:05.




There have been many people involved in getting this project going -- literally hundreds! This project started with 35 teachers and then involved more than three dozen community members. It included presentations and feedback at each school and several Board presentations. Thanks to all who have assisted in formulating our approach to this project.

We will use this blog to continue to provide updates throughout the summer, approximately once per week.

As always, please feel free to contact me by phone at (507) 645-3458 or by email at matt.hillmann@nfld.k12.mn.us.

Public Information Meeting Review

We had between 15 and 20 people attend this evening's public information meeting at Northfield High School this evening. The highlight of the evening for most attendees were the excellent questions and comments offered by a rising Freshmen.

The presentation we used this evening is embedded below.




Thanks to the folks who attended!

Public information meeting scheduled for June 7

This message will be sent to parents in the District today:


The Northfield School District will hold a public information session regarding the progress of the District's transformational technology proposal on Thursday, June 7 at 6 pm in the Northfield High School auditorium. The District's transformational technology proposal  considers the use of tablet computers by teachers and students. The agenda will include presentations about the vision of the use of tablet computers by students and teachers, the potential implementation process, the cost of the project, and the method being considered to fund the implementation district-wide. The public will also be able to ask questions about the proposal. Please view the District's Transformational Technology blog for more information at:

 http://northfieldtechtransformation.blogspot.com/

Please contact Matt Hillmann with any questions by email at matt.hillmann@nfld.k12.mn.us or by phone at (507) 645-3458.


In addition, we plan to send it to the Northfield News, KYMN radio, and Northfield Patch.


The purpose of this informational meeting will be to give district residents another opportunity to hear about our ideas regarding the transformational technology project.  Unlike our previous community meetings, this will be a presentation and a question/answer period.


We hope to see you there!

Board Presentation

We will be proposing the "road map" concept of our transformational technology project at this evening's School Board meeting. We aren't asking the Board to take any action at this meeting, just giving them the nuts and bolts of the plan. Since we have already established the vision of how we can potentially use tablet devices in our classrooms, we won't be revisiting that tonight. I encourage you to view this video the presents the vision if you haven't already viewed it.

You can click here to view a copy of the presentation we are sharing with the Board. You can also watch the Board meeting video, embedded below. The Transformational Technology presentation starts at 52:10 on the timeline.






As always, feel free to contact me with any questions by email at matt.hillmann@nfld.k12.mn.us or by phone at (507) 645-3458.

Update

The past two weeks have been spent reviewing and reflecting upon the feedback we received from the numerous presentations and focus groups conducted throughout the District. We are working on finalizing our proposal to the School Board, which will be presented on May 29. The meeting begins at 7 pm and will be held in the Northfield High School Media Center.

The keys to the proposal will include:

• Timeline for proposed implementation
• The type of device being recommended
• The implementation task forces needed to ensure a successful start
• Focus on the types and frequency of professional development needed to ensure a successful start
• Policies/practices that will need to be updated/put in place to support the initiative
• The cost - not just for next year, but for the next several years in order to ensure sustainability

I will post the proposal here once it is finalized and presented to the School Board. We are not going to ask the Board to take any action on May 29 - this is an informational presentation. We would hope the Board would consider adopting the plan at their June 11 meeting.

Articles

Two local new outlets have published stories on our ideas surrounding transformational technology in the last week or so:

Northfield Patch
Northfield News

Review: Public Meetings

We held community information meetings this past week about our ideas surrounding transformational technology -- 20 people attended last Saturday, April 21 and 15 people attended on Tuesday, April 24. I shared a presentation very similar to the video I've posted on this blog and took general questions for approximately the first hour. I shared several iPad apps to demonstrate the ability of the tablet device. These included:

• iBooks text books - Life on Earth and Building a Nation
• MathBoard
• TopIt Addition 0-12
• National Archives
• The Presidents
• Classical Lite
• Garage Band

We broke the attendees into small groups for the next hour to discuss three questions:

1. What excites you about this idea for our students and teachers? 
2. What concerns you about this idea?
3. Please list the top five things you'd want to make sure the District considers as it develops this further. 

The groups had many thoughts:

People were excited about the opportunities for interactive content for students, the thought of significantly reducing the weight of student backpacks, and the ability for tablet computers to provide differentiated materials at an academic level and learning style most appropriate for each student.

There were concerns -- and we're happy that they are some of the very same worries we have had already. These included teacher training, misuse of the device, damage to the device, policies covering acceptable use of the devices, and ensuring our technology infrastructure was prepared to handle the devices.

One interesting concern shared by one small group was what happens to our students if we don't choose to integrate these devices in our school district. Basically, if we choose not to "go down this road" and other schools do, are there long-term consequences for our students?

I was very pleased with the participation in these two meetings -- the input we received will be extremely valuable as we begin to develop a "road map" that will be proposed to the School Board in May.

Video: Our overall transformational technology concept

Today's post includes a video that provides an overview of the District's current concept of transformational technology. The video is approximately 26 minutes long and is similar to other presentations that we have made to the community. One disclaimer -- the iPad 2 that I am using in the video is our family iPad (this will explain the Madden NFL and other game icons you'll see in the background.)

Community Presentations/Feedback Sessions

A message was sent today to all District families via our Skylert messaging system about two community presentations/feedback sessions that we'll be hosting about transformational technology:

• Saturday, April 21st from 10 am - 12 pm
• Tuesday, April 24 from 7 pm - 9 pm

Both sessions will be held in the Northfield Middle School Media Center.

During this phase, our intention is to visit with lots of people about the concept of transformational technology. We do not have our formal proposal prepared yet -- you will hear ideas that we have and then be given an opportunity to discuss and share thoughts about those ideas. The intention of these meetings is to help the District as we formulate a "road map" concept of integrating this kind of technology.

In the next few days, I'll be posting some videos demonstrating some of the technology that excites us and has motivated this process.

Spreading the word and gathering ideas

I spent quite a bit of time this week presenting ideas about our transformational technology project with students, staff, and community members.

On Tuesday, we ran two student focus groups - at the Middle School and High School. After briefly explaining the research we are engaged in, I asked students (approximately 14 students at each site) to discuss four questions:

• What do you think would be positive about all students having a tablet computer?
• What would concern you about all students having a tablet computer?
• What would you expect your teachers to do differently if all students had a tablet computer?
• Do you believe students would take care of a tablet computer? What procedures do you think would be appropriate if students misuse their tablet computer?

At the high school, we didn't get through all of the questions due to the depth of students answers for the first two questions. These students were incredible and their comments and questions were insightful.

We also held staff information sessions at the High School and Sibley Elementary. We plan to visit other schools later this week. While many staff are informed by being part of the working group or through building level discussion, we are making sure that everyone has an opportunity to hear an update on the progress of our research.

Finally, Dr. Richardson and I presented to the Northfield Rotary Club. This is a very large group of community stakeholders and we were very thankful for their time, attention, and questions.

We have scheduled two community presentations/feedback sessions:

• Saturday, April 21st from 10 am - 12 pm
• Tuesday, April 24 from 7 pm - 9 pm

Both sessions will be held at the Northfield Middle School Media Center.

KYMN Radio interview with Dr. Richardson and Matt Hillmann

Dr. Richardson and I had the opportunity to visit with KYMN Radio host Jeff Johnson this morning. We had a great conversation about transformational technology. Jeff was a gracious host and had great questions about how we are at (maybe beyond?) the tipping point for true technology transformation in our nation's classrooms.

You can listen to the 40 minute interview by clicking here.

The beginning...

Over the past couple of School Board meetings, we have begun discussing transformational technology for modern learners. The accelerated development of tablet computers, couple with rapidly expanding digital textbook resources have inspired us to look more closely at the potential for replacing traditional textbooks with tablet computers for students.

In January and February, more than 30 educators from across the District researched, discussed, and analyzed the potential for tablet computers in our classrooms. That group's recommendation, provided to the District Technology Steering Committee, was to consider an aggressive implementation timeline to modernize resources for our students by using tablet computers for each student. The Technology Steering Committee began their review of this recommendation in March and will continue to do so throughout the Spring.

I will be making a presentation to the School Board this evening, highlighting the path we intend to take in regards to evaluating what such an implementation will look like in Northfield. You can view my outline here.

While there are a plethora of items to consider in evaluating this kind of implementation, we also have the ability to learn from the school districts that have already implemented similar programs.

As part of our next steps, we plan to continue to gather feedback from stakeholders. This includes:

• Informational meetings for staff at individual schools
• Informational meetings for community members 
• Focus groups with Middle and High School students 

These meetings will be scheduled in the near future and announced on this blog and also emailed to District parents via our Skylert system.

Please return to this site to follow our progress during this discussion!

Welcome!

The Northfield Public Schools has spent the last several month beginning the process of analyzing transformational technology to support our modern learners. You can follow our progress on this site  as well as get updates at our Technology Transformation Project web site.