Great IT-project

It was quite a complicated job, but I've just rounded it up: the ordering of computers for the school IT-project. All hardware companies and stores that I contacted did what they could. Prices were very sharp. But the decision is made. Every teacher in our secondary school will be provided with a Dell Latitude D820 by mid 2008. A Port Replicator will connect these computers in each class with a Dell Projector 2400MP with 3000 ANSI lumen light intensity.
Classes in primary school will use Dell Optiplex 745 computers.
So this will be my job for the rest of the school year: installing computers, beamers, printers, study and test the wireless and wired networks of the school, training the colleagues in the use of the learning environment Blackboard.
Schools can't go back. ICT has become a part of our modern culture, and education, being a part of that culture, has the task of showing young people how to use this modern technology in a positive way. We have to show our kids how to find information, how to evaluate it and how to use it to get to the heart of the matter and to be creative. The pre-computer generation can help here since content is still more important than the means, just as drill is important for memory training and concentration is important for success. If teachers feel surpassed by the technological (r)evolution, I want to be there to help, because I know that their knowledge and experience can help in keeping the balance. Their input must make students realise that there is more than chat and mail and games and second, third and fourth worlds... How about developing this one? ;-)

Desktop or portables?

That was the question... the answer was: portables!
The digitisation-project of our school is developing. The wireless network should be active by the end of the Easter holidays, but I hope the electrician will start working on the cables... Yes, cables because there needs to be one cable between each access point and the controller. And there being some 35 access point all over the school this is quite a job.
Then there was the question of one desktop and one projector in each classroom...
Finally the verdict was: let's lend each teacher one portable. There are a number of advantages:

• Personal responsibility is better for the survival of the hardware.
• Teacher can prepare everything at home and be sure the software works when use it at school.
• For parallel lessons this is a good solution: the teacher is sure the computer in the next class will work: it's his/her portable!
• Teachers can use it for their school mail.
• The school is responsible for the licences of the software they have installed. From then onward the teacher is responsible for the other software.
• Security: teachers take the computers home during evenings, weekends and holidays. The risk of theft is divided.

There are also some disadvantages:

• IT-responsible can't control the state of the computer at all times.
• The local and server profiles might be a bit confusing for the user. I'm looking for a solution for that. Help is welcome.

Of course there is also the cost, but I will do some work scanning the market to get the best deal!

In all this means that the school will invest in some 75 portables in 2 years time...

Great to get to know them!

The visit of our international colleagues was a great experience to me. The group arrived a bit late because of traffic problems (we are used to that in the Antwerp area...), so the school tour was cut short. Before that, I was able to chat with people from the organisation VVOB and with Jan 't Sas, journalist at the education magazine "Klasse", who later on wrote an on line article of the event (Dutch). On the group's arrival I was very pleased to see Simone Goetschalckx again. We used to be study-mates at university in the 1970's. Now she is responsible for the VVOB projects in Vietnam and Cambodia. Also great was meeting Jan Geusens with who I have started to prepare the workshops I will give in HCMC (Saigon) later this year in December.
Headmaster Johan and I welcomed the visitors in our "polyhall". Johan explained the structure of our school organisation and the importance of ICT within that.

Then the group was split to attend three lessons in rotation.

The third form students were attending an informatics lesson by Ilse Heughebaert in our new computerclass R02. Many videos and pictures were taken by the Kenian, Cambodian and Vietnamese colleagues!

Our M04 classroom contains a projection system and 4 more computers used for group work or remedial exercises. Dré De Laet was teaching aesthetics to 6th form students there. Each visitor group was received with a warm welcome in English. The students were very enthousiastic of the visit as well!Finally the 1st form was having a history lesson (ICT-based) by Ann Onraedt, who amazed the visitors by the way she integrated IT in her lesson. They were also a bit puzzled because the students didn't speak English, but she explained that English starts from 2nd form onwards in our school system.

Later on there was coffee, but also Belgian beers, which were very welcome to most of the visitors! Jan 't Sas had some interviews, and I presented the school's situation and future plans for ICT.
The presentation can be downloaded.

Finally the core VVOB-team, including my good friend Marc Gorremans and his wife, finished this lovely day at the restaurant Park West where we had a great dinner and where I got to know the first person to love scorzonerae... (Jan!)