With a couple of days to spare, our latest ‘lab’ is up and running. Designed entirely to facilitate ‘project based learning’ in year 9 (160 students), with ‘almost’ 1 to 1 computing.
The wireless network was completed today and tested. The facility is running off Moodle/Server 2003. It has some neat features designed to ensure it needs very low network engineering and most of all is shamelessly CLASSROOM 2.0 focused.
The wireless allows anyone to access the network as a guest. We took that from the methods used in hotels. Anyone hooking onto it is assigned a temporary guest pass. We ran it on XP/Vista and OSX with no problems. Students can use just about any WiFi enabled device. I am keen to hook up some PSPs and Nintendos next year.
Guests to the school can do the same – so we have done away with the hassles of having to get a technician to enable computers and configure the connection manually. Guest access is via a proxy, so we maintain the usual levels of security.
One benefit is that the wireless will run Second Life! in a transparent mode. This will allow groups of students to use the wireless laptops in Skoolaborate. SL also runs on any desktop. Students log-in using their Skoolaborator username and password to Windows and the ‘magic’ happens to shut down other applications and allow SL to run direct to the sim through the proxy with no problems. This solves the problem of having an open proxy during SL sessions.
We will be able to do this for video-conferencing and other ‘rich’ applications too in the future. Our iMacs show up tommorrow for their installation, and so we have a mix of 60% Desktop, 30%PC Laptop and 10% Apple Desktop. All machines run Open Office – not Microsoft Office – and the browser is loaded with plenty of Web2.0 tools, grouped into genre.
We offer students a range of blogs – we want them to select the one they prefer, and so on with a number of other Web2.0 services. We can manage the Favourites in all browsers remotely, so we can add new ones.
We have created del.icio.us accounts for the various courses, embedded into Moodle, so teachers can collectively tag content that may be of use to the students. Students will have their own blog space and collective Wiki spaces for projects.
I guess the ‘upgrade’ from the original Napa model is that we are doing PBL via Web2.0 applications. Napa was running the usual – Office, Paintshop Pro and other similar apps, hung of Lotus Notes (yes you remember notes!).
So while I thought the PBL message was strong and relevant to us, the technology they hung it off was not 21st Century to me, and the method of delivery that students used for presentations and building digital folios was very 90s in its thinking.
No one is quite sure how PBL will go in the first weeks, I have a suspicion that the whole place will run more like an internet cafe or gamer lounge than it will a classroom.
Behaviour management is though bandwidth allocation. Mess about and enjoy life at 56k. Dump games in your share folder and see it reduced to 1meg! I am going to attempt to rotate students in PBL though some low end system admin. I want them to audit their own groups use of technology. So if a group decides to waste time, then it will be a member of that group that will do the usage audit and then report back. Good behaviour means group access to high bandwidth and Laptops, poor usuage the other way. This will create self-managed students whom will be motivated. This again is a work in progress – but I am keen to develop methods of ’student control’ that are not founded in BANNING students.
After a long term and a lot of late nights … I look forward to seeing the facility running … and as I’ve said before, will focus my ‘blogging’ on the development of the facility in terms of Classroom 2.0 learning in 2008. I hope that other schools and teachers will find it of interest and might be interested in working with us in the future.
Merry Christmas one and all – Im off to hack a Wii remote and build an interactive wipeboard for my kids … for about $50
Dean, it sounds brilliant. Definitely interested in finding ways for Korea to work with you in the future.
But first, let’s sleep for a few days non-stop. Sounds like you need it as much as I do