I wrote this Blog when in Victoria BC earlier this week.
I am married to a wonderful woman, she is funny, beautiful and very smart. She laughs at my jokes, most of the time, and I always trust her to bring me down when I am all wound up about something, be it work, other drivers or even the people who live on our street
She is also runner, foodie and a blogger, she blogs mainly about her running, although I see it has been a while since she posted, hint hint.
Jenn supports me in most of my ventures as we tend to like the same things, travel, eating and catching up on TV, with are both Coronation Street fans… Shhh! We are also both geeks and love techie stuff.
She kicks me in the ass when I don’t get out of bed in the early morning to get on the treadmill, ok she gives me the look!!! Which is just fine as I need it, got to reduce the weight you know.
Anyhow what is the point of this post? Well as you know I am working though a Blog 101 through The Daily Post and the exercise was to write about who this blog in aimed at and I just fell off track talking about my awesome wife… So back to the subject matter.
I could say I want this Blog to be read my anyone, and if anyone did read it well then I would have succeeded, but that I am aiming at with this blog is a certain audience, that being techie, educators who are techie and of course my wife!!
So what do I mean by techie, take where I am sitting right now at a Starbucks at the intersection of Government and Yates in Victoria BC. I Came here for a coffee, now on number two, and to charge my phone as it was down to 50% already, 10am, and I need to be able to be in touch with Jenn until around 9pm this evening when she is done dinner with a customer… Yet again I digress…
So here is an example of what type of posts to expect when you visit.
As I sit here looking around I see a large number of iPad being used, not by younger people, but older people, the younger people are on their phones and from what I can see they are a mix of Android and iPhone. So as someone interested in tech and how it is used I see that younger people would prefer to use a phone while older people an iPad, could this be easily applied to the classroom? I say yes, most students have a phone now, particularity in the high grades, and although we are unable to purchase devices for everyone at this time, this small step towards BYOD would start to adjust how staff would use BYOD in a classroom.
Here in an interesting article on using Smartphones in the classroom.
http://www.nea.org/tools/56274.htm
There are also lots of app geared towards Smartphones, here are some Science apps and websites.
http://www.planet-science.com/categories/parentsteachers/science-resources/2011/06/using-smartphones-in-the-classroom.aspx
Finally a list of 44 ways to use Smartphones in the classroom
As school districts struggle to fund devices having students use their own smartphones can help with this shortfall, we just need to be able to support teachers in this and for us backend people, like me, we also need to ensure that the network is robust and easy enough to use to enable seamless integration into classroom learning.
So was this post really part of the exercise for be to get into Blogging? Maybe a little, but I do hope to be able to have a more conversation model
So this is I a techie who works in education and as with anything out there in the digital world link changes, websites disappear and things don’t always appear to be what they seem. I am also not an educator and my views and thoughts are my own.
The Retired Dude 