If you are like me you are married to your applications: iMovie, Sketchup, iPhoto, Fireworks, and many others. I have always loved the next great application that could outperform others in the same class. However, in the present economy I am a bit more married to saving where I can. Whether I am purchasing for home or for work it is my duty as an American to get the best product/service for the least amount of money. It just so happens that I am finding that I can replace my current applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ...) at work with free cloud applications and save my school money. Saving money with free cloud apps and netbooks for students will hopefully free up the money that is needed to support my human infrastructure with the appropriate staff developments needed.
If you have been following this blog you know that I have been testing out the MSI Wind Netbook to see if it can replace the current laptops my students are using. I am also trying out various Cloud Apps to see if I can replace the applications my students are currently using. Today I began the process of getting everything I am currently working on with my students into the clouds. I am using Google Apps to start with and I am using it under my school district domain. First thing I need to do is put as request into the district to have them create account for all of my students and teachers in my building. Once that is done I can begin importing all of the email addresses to create my contact lists and start sharing and collaborating. The next step is to get a cloud environment setup in a small isolated group (my Build Your Own Online Business class) that is willing to work solely in the clouds. This class will be ideal to test in due to it's nature. The students will develop a website, business plan, marketing plan, commercials, and an online presentation about their new online business. All of this will be done with cloud applications and a open source CMS (Content Management System) on a remote server.
The applications I plan on using are:
I would love to give all of my students MSI Winds for this class, but I am not sure how to get a set of 15 netbooks. That would make this part of the project so much more meaningful. My ultimate goal is to have all my students in the school using netbooks. Whether they own them and bring them to school (ideal) or the school purchases enough that our school achieves a 1:1 netbook:student ratio as possible.
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8 Comments
Hey Jon,
I love the idea that you are trying to use these "Net Books" for your classes. Now I have been reading your blog and if you are trying to test it for yourself as a teacher, you might not get the full effect of what the true potential these computers would have on your class or students. What I recommend is asking MSI for 15 of these computers to use for your 6 week class and actually have the students use these MSI net books during class with no other tools and completely depending on them to teach the class and direct presentations, documents, and their own websites which you were saying and document how the class works with the computers and if it truly is a success with the school. If it really turns out to be spectacular you can contact your district of school and if they like the idea you could possible have a school use these computers all the time which would be almost 45-50 thousand computers due to the fact that most large school Districts as I read have about 55,000 students, so if all goes well. Take this into consideration and maybe this could be revolutionary way to use these technology's to conduct full classes on.
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Jon Pierce Reply:
February 11th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Lael-
I am glad to hear you and I are thinking the same. My initial though was to let MSI know what I was trying to accomplish at my school and perhaps my school district. The MSI Wind has been such a great netbook thus far for working in the clouds. After reading your comment I think I will follow my first instinct and contact MSI to see if they are willing to send my 15 demo MSI Winds. Thanks for the great comment. I will continue to post on MSI's response.
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It's your wedding day and you're on Yahoo! Answers asking for advice? Hahahahaha! Look, why not ask a friend or something? How would "I" know (and I'm possitive this question was aimed at me specifically) what you should do?
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Some friends of mine got married early and they asked everyone to bring a picnic and we all went to the grounds of an old castle ruins and picnic'ed together, it was a really beautiful and personal thing to do and it means people will waste time talking amongst themselves, then as it gets later hire a room and have a disco so the kids can join you! Congratulations, have a really good day whatever you do.x
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The most common factor that happily married couples state keep them together or able to overlook each others inequalities, is a relationship with their God and their Church.
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I have been married for over 5 years. I have not done anything in my maiden name since that time. In the last 6 months I have only been getting credit card apps in my maiden name. Is this something that I should be concernedd with? Could this mean someone is using my maiden name? I contacted my bank's identity theft hotline, and they said that it isn't a concern.
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I think they're just trying to get your attention. They want you to talk to them but they don't know how to begin a conversation with you for fear of being turned away....
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