Friday, February 22, 2013

Nexus 7 Tablet!



The Nexus 7 tablet from Google has become a great device for being use in schools for many reasons:
1- The Google Nexus 7 is half the price of the iPad. To illustrate, for the 8 GB model, it comes for 199$ and 249 $ for the 16 GB model. By going with the Nexus 7, schools can get two of them instead of  two iPads. It's really nice.
2- Some people think that because of the price of the Google Nexus 7 tablet, it is not powerful as an iPad. That's not true because the Nexus tablet has many great features which allow students to be engaged and interested.
3- The battery life is just perfect for the use in a classroom. It can stay for about 8 hours. 
4- The size of the Google Nexus 7 is really good for students. The screen is just 7 inches. As a result, it is going to be easy to use and to navigate.
In fact, there are other features of  Nexus 7 tablet which can make a huge difference in education. When I was doing my internship, the instructional technology specialist who works there said that " I have noticed that theses tablets are not as easy to navigate as the iPad." 
I played a little bet with the Nexus 7 tablet, and I really noticed that too. However, kids can figure it out and just love it.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

The GradeBook


The Grade book is one of the tools that West Carlton has used. Basically, it includes coulombs for attendance,  test scores, homework, and other details. I think that it is really important because it keeps all the grades that students have achieved for the whole semester in this book. For the elementary school, they use report cards, and they look really simple. Standards based report cards are being used for the report cards. For the high school, it gets more complicated. AT the end of each period, the teachers print the report cards and send them home for the parents. In the future, they would like to publish the report cards on their web page so the parents could have an access to see their child's grades..

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

My First Day of the Internship


On Thursday 01, 17, 2013, it was the first day for me to do my internship at West Carlton School District. For this semester, I work three hours a week with the instructional technology specialist at this district. When I first came, we worked on Google Chrome Books that the school ordered for students in some buildings. Probably, the laptops were 300. As a result, we spent a long time on removing them from the boxes and also removing the stickers for each one. Then we logged in as instructors. We also registered them into Chrome OS setting so that they can manage the laptops. When anyone has an issue or needs to be fixed, they would know it exactly.