This review is about Doug – Off the Record, by Doug Peterson (https://dougpete.wordpress.com/about/). Doug has been doing his blog since 2008 and is based out of Ontario, Canada. He has 22 interviews with educators and he has a wicked, slightly twisted sense of humor. He uses a couple of sights that I would normally be leery of such as Delicious and Diigo (they sound like I would get in trouble) and a couple more that I have never heard of (though I have used Skype before). His humor matches mine and I will probably poke around more on his sight in the future. He did not have any pictures other than this one….

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I read Let it Grow: Developing a whole -school 1:1 digital ecosystem and pedagogy to transform teaching and learning by Greg Hughes  (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/let-it-grow-developing-1-1/id844578060?mt=11). After reading it through ( four times) I am still a little confused as to what it was saying. I understand that to create an 1:1 digital ecosystem (did not know that something digital could be an “ecosystem” there are three key principles that must be followed.

3 Key Principles

Digital devices should engage all learners and help them to develop greater independence.

Digital devices should enhance and ultimately transform learning.

Digital devices should provide maximum leverage for improvements in students’ attainment and progress, at their own pace.

He also states that there are five pre-requisites that have to be done in order to achieve the end state.

5 Pre-requisites

ICT infrastructure – This includes wireless internet that is fast enough and reliable enough to handle the volume of work, as well as having suitable technical support personnel.

Flipped Lessons – Provide more time for student support by moving basic tasks (note taking, annotation and research) to pre-lessons and home learning.

SAMR Model – Used to transform teaching and learning.

Pedagogy – To truly transform teaching and learning, this must be put at the center of an educator or school’s vision.

Continuous Professional Development (CPD) – Using I-Pad Champions, Student Digital Leaders and guest bloggers are ways to engage the staff.

This is where it gets difficult, he states that if you do not have the above pre-requisites completed that you are doomed to fail. I understand the need for infrastructure and continued training, but this assumes that the school has the funds to complete these tasks. If they do not, it seems that it would be a waste of time and effort. Greg gives examples of how some classes scored better by using the flipped method with the 1:1 but I wonder about the extra effort that a teacher is required to do to accomplish this task. Overall, I understand his point and applaud it, but it does not answer some critical questions for me.

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This week I chose Cool Cat Teacher Blog (http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html) by Vicki Davis  because I am a cool cat, myself. Vicki is a teacher, author, IT director and co-founder of Flat Classroom Projects (it is internationally recognized).There is a link to where you can buy her books, advertise, listen to pod casts or you can hang out on the home page with various links and posts from previous blogs. This blog has been going on since 2005 but has been changed to this website http://www.coolcatteacher.com/ (this one seems a bit more organized, but still chaotic). There are seven quick link tabs at the top and  the information from the previous site is here, as well. I cannot imagine trying to run a blog, teach, direct and run an organization with only 24 hours in the day…THAT is a lot of energy!!!

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