The Wire
Mouse Highlights: Bard High School Early College
On January 28th, 2008 by Mister G
Hi! My name is Juan Garzon for those of you who don’t know me or never heard if me, I’m the new guy here at Mouse. My job is to support your Mouse Squad and help you succeed. My official title is Field Support Representative. I go from school to school to learn about what you do, offer my assistance by shareing the knowledge I have accumulated from all our schools. When I stumble upon good things happening, which I always do, I share them here. Today I want to share about my visit to Bard High School Early College.
Like the name suggests these students jump in to college early in High School, and graduate with an Associates Degree. Although not a substitute for College it gives these students a head start. http://www.bard.edu/bhsec/
The Mouse Squad at Bard is known as BHSEC Techs and their fearless leader is Peter Kolbe. Peter's management style is supportive. The squad has no formal meeting time but everyday his students come in and out of his office looking for more to do. While I was there I saw at least 3 students come by and talk to Peter. In addition to providing tech support for the school, these students have their own personal projects such as Graphic Design, PHP programming and learning Drupal. Peter guides each of these kids on their projects and points them in the right direction to find the answers. He communicates with them via email, the school's intranet and of course, face to face.
Peter has taught his students how to use Clonezilla to image and backup the schools computers which makes it possible to recover more quickly from a massive problem. Peter is a major supporter of open source software and along with Clonezilla, he teaches the students how to use Open Office, to replace Microsoft Office, and teaches FireFox as a more secure and customizeable internet browser. He has documented some of the enhancements that can be done on his blog http://bolt.beetlebolt.com/blog/?p=96
As an added bonus we brought along the XO Laptop from OLPC project. http://laptop.org/laptop/ This laptop lit up the math department when we pulled it out and after a short demo we let Peter and his students borrow it so they can write about on his blog http://bolt.beetlebolt.com/blog/ They've shared their reflections /node/3761. At the end of the day I learned a couple of new things myself, such as using Thunderbird as an effective alternative to Outlook. It’s great to see this new squad up and running. Stay tuned for more profiles from the field.
Peter and Juan
Composing music on the B4 prototype
Trying to logon to the MESH network
The Educon Effect: Give the Mouse Network Your Projects
On January 28th, 2008 by Anonymous
This weekend I learned why every student should learn how to program, how teachers are developing their own personal networks for professional development, how identity online changes our lives in the real world, took a guided tour of second life and shadowed a warrior in Warcraft. All the while I was tweeting (microblogging) about what I was hearing and am still trying to make sense of it all. Here's a short list of what I've taken away for Mouse.
The endless stream of web technologies provide new and exciting opportunities for project-based learning. Whether the project is a short story written by students around the globe using Twitter or connecting kids with Free and Open Source Software projects so that they can hone their programming skills there are a dizzying array of ways to tap into student interests, have fun and learn along the way.
Project based learning is challenging to do in school systems dedicated to raising test scores but possible and most important--worth the effort. In short, because students learn and are excited about learning. Mouse Squad and MouseCORPS are all about project based learning. Bring a group of students together with a committed educator and work at solving the school's technology problems. We've enshrined these ideals in our curriculum but it reminded me that much depends upon our faculty advisors and students--on your interests, desires and of course, you have to get it done in a cramped school day.
Mouse Squad and its student-led help desk model offers a process for involving students in solving the inevitable problems that arise when schools work to integrate technology in the classroom. A concern that I've heard when I'm in the field is from Faculty advisors who are unsure about what to do with their Mouse Squads. This weekend got me thinking that the Mouse community would do well to create an project cookbook and index.
What might this cookbook look like? It might begin with a story of a project that you and your Mouse Squad completed. Did you refurnish a lab? Find a better way to do Smartboard training for teachers? Produce a podcast? My guess is that your projects exceed my imagination and that your ideas will inspire others. So I am asking you to take some time to stop, reflect upon an activity that worked well or had promise and share it with others here in the Mouse Squad community. So here's a challenge to the Mouse Squad Community--let's get 15 project ideas posted by February 15th. Every Squad that participates will get profiled on MouseSquad.org.
Looking forward to your ideas.
PS - have a blog? We'd like to link to you from our website--send us the link, tag it for:mousenyc in del.icio.us or send an email to help at mail.mousesquad.org. We'll get some some traffic and help make your site more of a conversation.
Conference Photostream
Gettng Ready for Educon 2.0
On January 25th, 2008 by Anonymous
One of the great things about being a part of Mouse is that I get to connect with educators doing amazing work. Chris Lehmann is the Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. He's organizing a conference/unconference called Educon 2.0, "where we want to come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools." You might wonder what Chris' connection to Mouse is--before starting his own school, Chris was an English Teacher and Ultimate Frisbee Coach at the Beacon School, where he advised a very successul Mouse Squad and was honored by Mouse as a Champion of Education and Technology in 2001. I'm excited about participating in the conversations about how we can make schools better. Here are some concepts that will be driving the conversations:
Guiding Principles of EduCon 2.0:
1) Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members.
2) Our schools must be about co-creating -- together with our students -- the 21st Century Citizen
3) Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around.
4) Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate
5) Learning can -- and must -- be networked.
What do folks in the Mouse network think about the Educon axioms?
What's amazing is just how much energy this conference has generated in the Edublogoshphere and Twitterverse. I know it's late notice to head down to Philly, but all of the sessions will be online and available via UStream from the conference's agenda page. I'll be posting my reflections here on the Wire over the weekend. Stay tuned.
