A Bit of Background

Sometime in the Fall of 2007, Kevin McGuire, our district's Technology Director and Mary Gish, the Information Technology Coordinator, approached me about the One-to-One technology project at Michigan City High. Many of our high school's English classrooms now had thirty computers, a large screen monitor, and a lot of useful software, all running on linux. This was all part of a larger state program.

Would I be interested in piloting the next step into Social Studies? Oh yeah. Since this would combine interests in social studies and instructional technology, and might possibly make me a more effective teacher, what's a little sleep loss?

By Late November, 2007, the computer desks were in, complete with power and network cabling. Over Christmas, HP computers running linux (OpenSuse/Novell) were installed. I did not yet have a "teacher computer." so the ability to observe and supervise (and change!) student desktops from my desktop was not yet there, but by mid to late January, 2008, I was ready to go with that software, "iTalc."

What the Heck Does This Do?

A wonderful part of using technology in education (as in other fields) is that "Ah Ha!" moment, the moment when you discover how something works. It's nearly as exciting as when your students make the same type of discovery!

This particular blog will focus on implementing a computer lab in a high school Social Studies classroom. The "thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" as some things are enthusiastically adopted, while others fizzle, will be chronicled.