An Apple a Day for Teachers In the 21st Century Classroom

Forget about giving a teacher a shiny red apple on the first day of school. This coming school year, teachers at Lewis F. Mayer Middle School and Fairview High School will be receiving a shiny new Apple laptop. Funds from the second phase of the district technology plan have been used to buy each teacher a laptop and provide a two day inservice to the staff in September. For teachers who would like to take a bite out of their Apple before the first day of school, a voluntary inservice will be held at the Middle School on August 1st, 4th or 5th. The building principals will be sending out more information on this inservice. If they attend, they will get to take their laptop home with them and get a headstart on learning how to use this new equipment in their classroom. In addition to the teacher laptops, the Middle School will also be receiving two new laptops for student use in each classroom, an upgraded lab which will be for Middle School use only and a rolling laptop lab that will be available for Middle School Teachers to use. This should free up some lab space in the existing High School labs, which for next year will remain PC labs. The High School is scheduled to receive classroom computer updates for the 2009-2010 school year.



The laptops will come loaded with Microsoft Office, including PowerPoint, Word and Excel. There are some differences in how these programs look in Apple but not on how they perform. Files teachers create on a PC should open on the Mac and vice versa. The laptops will also have wireless capabilities, so they can be used in most locations in the HS/MS complex. There may be deadspots in the HS music wing and in the back of the HS phys. ed. wing. Teachers will also be able to use the built in camera to make video blogs, movies with their students and have visual and audio conferences with other staff members.



For those teachers who are not familiar with Apple or the Apple tools like Apple Mail, Garage Band, I-Movie and other I-Life Tools and Jabber Chat that will be used next year, there are easy to use Apple Tutorials online at Mac101. These are step by step visual guides to using a Mac written for PC users who are transitioning to the Mac Platform.



Teachers who are familiar with Google Tools (see the April Posting "What's Up Docs") will be able to access Google Tools from their new Mac. They may also want to install the Google Toolbar on their new laptop, keeping in mind that the laptops will be using Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer as the web browser. One of the nice features of the Google Tool Bar is the Bookmarks option. This allows you to save web "favorites", label and sort them and even share them with others. Just like any of the other Google Tools, the Bookmark feature will travel with you on any computer that you are using, as long as you login to your Google Account. You can also do a Google Search directly from the toolbar without opening the Google homepage.

The technology changes that are being made over the next two years are a part of our district's plan to integrate the national education technology movement called The Twenty First Century Classroom into our curriculum and into the learning environment we are providing to our students.

Keep in mind that even the shiniest apples can have a worm hiding inside. There will be some challenges for all of us in making the transition at the HS/MS from a mostly PC environment to a Mac environment. But, I know that the staff of Fairview High School and Lewis F. Mayer Middle school are certainly up to the challenge. We will be learning together how to live the I-Life in our classrooms. Teachers across the world are using these tools in their classroom lesson plans. Apple also recognizes teachers who are using their technology in new and innovative ways. To read more about this, go to their Distinguished Educator Showcase.