Beneath the Surface

Williston is up and running on our one-to-one tablet computers—the Surface Pro—and the results are coming in. Sure there will be some glitches along the way, but seeing students and faculty with the same device and already hearing about the great applications for teachers is music to my ears.

This is not your father’s laptop—and it’s certainly not an old operating system. Here’s an example:  Remember all of those long note taking lectures in college where one painstakingly filled in notebooks, only to return at the end of the term to try and make sense of the long forgotten context?  The school-wide application OneNote syncs the teachers power point to the students’ notes: a student’s notes will link directly back to the teacher’s slides. Donnie McKillop is employing this practice in his ninth grade World Civilization classes. Josh Seamon has also been using OneNote to project lessons, collect homework assignments, and share his own notes. Thanks to both of them for sharing their innovative classroom work!

As the year progress, I look forward to hearing about, and then sharing here, how more teachers at Williston are using the Surface Pros and incorporating all of the new technology into their classes. It’s a brave new world, and I can’t wait for us all to explore it together.