http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/chromebooks-for-classrooms-99-for_10.html

Definitely relevant to the problem of how long it takes for everyone to get their computers out and ready: these Chromebooks have a start-up time of about 6 seconds.

Because of this, I try to keep usage of our classroom netbooks to times when they are absolutely necessary. As a result of this approach, my students tend to show greater gains in reading and writing by trimester’s end.

Also, my hat is off to Jonathan’s persistence in the face of technology that is doing its best to destroy him. Cobbling a technology solution together out of shoe polish, braided twigs, and WebDAV connections might work on a hyper-local level but this post is interested specifically in national calls for more technology integration when, in fact, it’s much harder than they think.

Initially I shied away from Google Docs because the iPad experience was quite terrible. It seems they’ve done an overall and thrown their weight behind a native Google Drive interface. It’s not as pretty as Numbers but offers simultaneous editing, something iCloud freaks out about. Though I only used a spreadsheet for two activities this year and keeping the records by hand would’ve been just as easy. Promising for the English/Social Studies crowd though.

@eric

Thanks, this is all a work in progress. I was one of many who thought our approach was doomed, and I’m upset that I’ve had to go to such crazy lengths to get it working. I would’ve much preferred two additoanl iPads over the 4 netbooks. The shortcomings of my supplied laptop got to be too much years ago. And unfortunately not everyone has the option to ditch it, so that’s holding people back as well. iCloud isn’t quite as rosy to deal with on Windows. Rumors of 13″ MBAs are floating around, but that won’t change anything about the giant hurdles most staff have to overcome. In fact initially it will probably be worse.

Despite how all this tech stuff is going, my happiest days in the classroom are when they work with pencil, paper, and marker to make posters.

I teach 9 and 10-year old kids, but I find that whatever I let them do using technology gets them motivated, and thinking. And they are fearless about trying new things. It’s a matter of time, both for the kids and for me. But they go home and keep working on what we were doing in school, and often teach me new ways to do things. Maybe with older kids, there are so many demands on everyone that you don’t have the luxury of time, and I’m not using iPads or specific apps that they might not have access to at home.

I don’t have a solution to all the tech issues that people have, but I would have to say it is so worthwhile to keep trying. Find people that are making it work in your district, ask for help from your tech support staff, bug your administrators to get you the resources you need, and, probably most importantly, listen to the kids.

Don’t get me wrong – I have encountered some difficulties with our network, as well as a HUGE learning curve and shift in thinking/planning, but with nearly a semester under my belt, and experiences with some amazing apps, I’m loving it, and so are my students.

Socrative and Nearpod have helped immensely with formative and summative assessment. I feel like I know my students in real-time in ways I have not thus far. Sure, Socrative lacks math symbols, but having to use “^” or “sqrt” is a small inconvenience when compared to the immediate, color-coded data that appears in my inbox instantaneously, and helps direct my teaching… not tomorrow, but today.

Though my objective has never to be “paperless” in a mathematics classroom, we have used apps like DocAS to annotate PDFs when it made sense to do so. I’m also using the HMH Fuse Algebra I Common Core app as a textbook – content is nearly identical to the physical books my students already had, but interactive features with immediate feedback have elevated the experience a bit. And again… when students work a problem using the “scratchpad” feature, or take one of the “Ready to Go On?” quizzes within the app, the data comes to me. For me, having iPads has impacted formative assessment in a very big way.

If you’d like to see more about how we’re using iPads, check out my blog: mathycathy.com/blog