A Tech Visit

During the last in-service, four staff members from South traveled to Bloomfield Hills Andover High School to see how their teachers have implemented the use of interactive whiteboards. This piece of technology is now in place in every classroom in the Bloomfield Hills district. We were joined there by four staff members from North and two from central office.

The implementation at the high schools began on January 2nd of this year, meaning they have had only about four months to get adjusted to the new tools. However, all of us were very impressed with its use so far.

For our visit, Andover made eight of their teachers from various disciplines available to us to show us how they use the whiteboards. Although each of them use it in different ways, the benefit to students and staff is obvious. The technology is used to provide much more detailed information at a quicker pace. Teacher and student thoughts and ideas can be quickly saved and shared again at a later date. It was readily apparent that interactive whiteboards facilitate increased engagement for students.

We also talked to their tech staff about student use of blogs, wikis and youtube. Simply stated, Bloomfield Hills schools have more open access for students. They have a filtering system, but students are not as "locked down" as they are in GP. The result is that blogs and wikis can be used to supplement what takes place in the classroom. Students can respond to the teacher and other students from their class from their homes.

I have attached a recent article from eschoolnews that speaks to the benefits of students using blogs. You can read it by clicking to the right under Articles of Interest on the link titled, eschoolnews.