Finalizing the lease: We were able to finalize the lease to allow us to receive the devices this Spring with the payment beginning in July. This will allow the District to have some additional time to prepare the iPads for students. The lease will still expire at the end of June in 2016.

Selecting a case: The District has zeroed in on the Griffin Survivor as the case for both the iPad 2 and iPad Mini devices. We have several vendors providing quotations and are confident, due to the volume we are purchasing, will get an excellent price.

Professional Development: We have set our Spring/Summer Professional Development schedule for our teaching staff. You can view our draft schedule by clicking here. These options accompany the regular sessions that have been offered at our buildings throughout the year.

In addition to our local professional development offerings, our teachers have access to workshops at TIES,  an educational technology consortium in St. Paul. As members of the consortium, our teachers can attend these sessions at no additional charge.

Our staff also has access to training through Atomic Learning, an online video professional development resource. This service provides hundreds of short online videos about dozens of software tools, including iPad use.  Our goal has always been and will continue to be to provide professional development in multiple venues en masse in an effort to support our staff. 

In the coming weeks, we’ll be working to prepare our process for entering the devices into our inventory. We will be discussing the first courses that are interested in transitioning to digital textbooks. 

As we move through the initial stages of implementation, I am reminded of a comment made by an elementary school child when I worked as a teacher and Director of Technology in Madelia, Minnesota. Our community had approved a bond issue to replace an early 1900s elementary school with a new and renovated facility. The morning after the vote, the child expressed disappointment to his mother as she was dropping him off at school: “I thought you said they voted to give us a new school. We still have the old one!” The young man obviously thought that schools were built overnight…the same can be said for how some view transforming education through the use of mobile technology. This ‘digital conversion’ will take some time and won’t happen “overnight.”  Our project is on track and we are excited about the path we are embarking upon. We will continue to move at a rate that supports our students, their teachers, and our futures.

As always, don’t hesitate to contact me by email at matt.hillmann@nfld.k12.mn.us or by phone at (507) 645-3458 if you have questions, comments, or concerns about the transition.

• Selecting a case
• Lease details
• Mobile device management system
• Learning management system
• Professional development schedule and curriculum
• Intake and inventory strategy
• Student distribution
• Policy and protocols

Each of these items are at slightly different stages, with the mobile device management system and learning management system seeing the most progress to this point. Nate Knutson, our outstanding network manager, has installed a test version of the Lightspeed Mobile Device Management system and we are liking what we see. This system should allow us to manage our iPads using one system as well as apply the District’s web content filtering wherever the devices are, not just at school.

We are nearing the selection of the enterprise version of Schoology as our learning management system. Several school districts in Minnesota (such as Minnetonka and Farmington) who have implemented a 1:1 iPad initiative are using Schoology. The web-based system will be a core resource for our staff in the substitution stage of the SAMR model framework we are focusing on for the 2013-14 school year. Our District Tech Steering committee viewed reference material and saw a demonstration on Friday by Northfield High School business education teacher/media specialist Julie Wolner. Mrs. Wolner is piloting Schoology with two of her classes this semester and is seeing great success.

We’ll be finalizing some other decisions and plans in the coming week. This is the phase of project where we are doing our best to “cross the Ts and dot the Is.” By focusing on details at this point, we should have an opportunity for a smoother implementation.

We’ll continue to update the blog and capture our journey towards transformation. Check back for updates!

Left: Sibley Special Education teacher Karleen Sherman and Sibley Grade 5 teacher Paula Baragary spoke in favor of the proposal at open mic.

Center: HR and Technology Director Matt Hillmann reviewed the proposal for the Board and summarized the online engagement activities and stats that I blogged about yesterday.

Right: Board member Rob Hardy raised concerns about the proposal, expressing his preference for a scaled back pilot project approach (which he has blogged about here,) and wondering if a BYOD (bring your own device) approach might be more cost-effective and sustainable (he blogged about this here and here.)

Update noon: Here’s the video of last night’s Board meeting. The Technology Transformation discussion begins at the 18:20 mark.

• TransTech Straw Poll report
• TransTech blog discussion transcript
• TransTech Google Analytics
• TransTech live chat transcript
• TransTech webinar
• TransTech Blog Post Titles

If you’d like to comment on the proposal, be sure to be there at the start of the meeting, as public comments are first on the agenda.  The guidelines:

This is an opportunity for members of the school district to address the Board. You are requested to do so from the podium. After being recognized by the chair, each individual will identify himself/herself and the group represented, if any. He/She will then state the reason for addressing the Board. To insure that all individuals have a chance to speak, speakers will be limited to one three-minute presentation. Please know that this is not a time to debate an issue, but for you to make your comments.

Supt. Chris Richardson has asked me to prepare a document for the Board that summarizes the online engagement activities and includes all the comments and straw poll results.  I’ll be working on it today and will post it here when it’s done.

I’ll close the online straw poll and the blog discussion thread around midnight on Saturday, Feb. 9 so that I have time to put it all together on Sunday.

So if you’ve not taken the straw poll, now’s the time.  And if you’ve got comments or want to discuss any aspect of the proposal, chime in with a blog comment ASAP!

Left: The transcript of today’s live chat with Director of HR and Technology Matt Hillmann can be viewed in the CoverItLive app that’s embedded in the blog post, Live chat with Matt Hillman, Wed. Feb 6, noon. Just click the replay button and then use the scroll bar.

Right: The video archive of yesterday’s webinar with Matt and Superintendent Chris Richardson is now embedded in the bottom of the blog post, Live webinar with Matt Hillman & Chris Richardson scheduled for Tuesday, Feb 5, 8 PM.

   
Matt Hillmann did his presentation on the Transformational Technology proposal again last night at the High School Auditorium.  About ten citizens attended, along with some District staff and three School Board members.

If you can’t attend but would like to submit a question, attach a comment to this blog post and I’ll make sure to submit it during the live chat on your behalf.

The live chat will take place right here inside this blog post at the bottom.

• Blog discussion w/ District staff
• Online straw poll
• Feb 4th, 7PM community mtg, High School
• Feb 5, 8 PM Webinar w/ District staff
• Feb 6, Noon Live chat w/ District staff