Revolution...

The thought of revolution should stir a kindred spirit in all of us. It was revolution that birthed our nation, revolution that conceived the very principals this great nation was founded upon. An ideal etched upon the bedrock of the dreams, the ideals, the principals, and the convictions of an entire people who looked into the face of tyranny and said, "No, we will not lay down silently, we will not fade into the night."

I don't think it would take too many people in the education field to realize that we are currently experiencing a revolution in the education field. Read the latest blogs or the latest articles in mainstream and you will see the consensus is ever pointing in the same ostentatious direction... Forward.

We have a world of change coming our way. No child left behind has now been blown to bits, scattering its enriched guts across the collective landscape in a promise of yesterday, only to be replaced by "Race to the top". The idea is simple, instill a sense of meaning, definition, responsibility, and self-worth into our children in   a k-12 environment using such tools as core curriculum  collaborative learning techniques, and a host of new standards aimed at having our students work together. This is the one fundamental job skill all employers around the world have asked be assumed upon entry.

Many teachers get it already, more responsibility, more bang for their buck, and the literacy landscape of learning that is ever-changing only gets more responsible for them. Before the naysayers attack me for such notions of "It's their job anyhow, they should be doing this by default!", let me remind you from my last blog, teachers of today are not just instructing the core curriculum, but are acting moderators, mentors, protectors of all things relevant to a child's well-being, the list continues to grow.

I am not even a teacher and I am required to go to bully training every single year. I am required to go to sessions on a host of ethics based issues in the education field that, in most cases, don't even relate to my area of expertise, but do to legislation and a host of laws in place, I partake in to protect our system from potential lawsuits.

We live in a digital age people. Our testing modules are fully online at the high school and the very threat of questionable activities during that testing window have made several teachers literally fear the prospect of being a proctor for such high stakes environments. It is a sad fact when the view is so strewn out before our teachers, they tend to embrace "What if's" more than they do the prospects of innovation.

I am a realist in all honesty. However, I do see the potential to such volatiles as dreams, innovations, critical thinking, even change... Or dare I use the word Revolutions?

Thus I come to my point countless paragraphs later, looking into today's classroom, seeing us on the precipice of change. No matter how you see that change, welcome or forced, it's coming my friends. And there is nothing we can do to stop it. Therefore I find it an enigma that technology rarely innovates us, but rather, it is we that use technology to innovate. In this case, where I am now, where we all are now, it truly seems technology for the first time has set the standard. Technology has begun the Revolution I write about.

That digital scene before us has raced forward so fast we have tried to catch up and it's like a true epiphany when we realize the potential, when we realize the strands of music, the sheets composed by the unifying language that is a 1 and a 0; that is to say this... we are forced to swallow hard and understand that sometimes, just sometimes, technology is the Artificial Intelligence we never expected it to be. It moves like a mosaic across a vast landscape of white, and becomes blues and grays, hashes and decimals, and soon forms into something more complex than we ever could imagine. It leaves us found weighed, measured, and found wanting. It takes us on journeys to places we never could go in a thousand lifetimes. With one click of a mouse we could visit the snow kissed Alps, or grace the halls of the Palace of Versailles.

This is my dilemma. While I write these words and express what I can in the best way I am able, I find it hard to put into words such a complex equation, such an infinite course of impossibilities. My journey has expanded ten fold in the past two months and it is all because of one thing. One single object has become a pathway to change, to purpose, to revelation, to Revolution...

The Wiimote.

That's right... One simple device. An entertainment "toy" that I play with my kids every weekend has been the catalyst to my own discovery. Two months ago I was already on top of my own game as far as job knowledge was concerned. There was never a problem I wasn't able to fix or at least have the resources to find an answer for. Then came the day that I had a teacher ask me for an interactive whiteboard solution. Honestly, I had heard of a host of products that could answer her inquiry; the SMART board, the Promethean Board, Star board, etc. I was even on the bandwagon of Mimio teach at the time and I gave that as my initial answer. Yet as the days passed, I found myself looking across the vast montage of the internet for a viable, cost-effective solution and I stumbled upon the Wiimote Whiteboard solution.

Way back in 2007, a man named Johnny Chung Lee figured out a way to use a Wiimote, an IR pen, and his own software, to transform any flat surface into an interactive environment using a projector and a computer.

Using the basic premise that I found I began to scour the internet for more resources on this, more data. I quickly found 3 businesses here and 2 abroad that provided a full hardware and software solution using this breakthrough technology for pennies on the dollar versus traditional interactive whiteboard methods. While SMART board re-sellers boast install packages as low as 2,000 dollars, Promethean upwards of 2,500 dollars, and even Mimio teach systems as low as 800 dollars, the wiimote suite of products can be purchased in a commercial environment for as low as 120 dollars.

www.wiiteachers.com 

The website above shows you how cost-effective this solution can be. There are other permanent solutions, and one we have found now is from IR Great innovations. This company provides a ceiling mounted solution with permanent power, a remote for turning the wiimote off and on when you want to use it, and the most up to date software in a commercial setting for 200 dollars (Negotiable of course based on number of units sold just like any other interactive whiteboard solution)

http://www.irgreat.com/

The latest software used in these commercial versions, called Smoothboard Air with Duo, allows any wireless device, handheld, tablet, or laptop/desktop based regardless of operating system, to communicate with the teacher computer. This feature alone is worth the price for the whole system in my humble opinion because it answers the question to Bring-Your-Own-Device scenario.

www.smoothboard.com

Of course with any emergent technology, there are always questions that are raised, and in my case, I had some opposition to say the least. The good news is, with the introduction of this new technology we were able to "Pilot" these systems in 3 classrooms (Including one of the classrooms of the teachers that asked for an Interactive Whiteboard solution in the first place) We have, to date, had plenty of time to see how effective this technology has been in these three classrooms. One teacher has reported actual classroom interaction and overall quiz scores are up because he bases his students use of the new technology on their performance on such scales. We also have a myriad of data from the middle school where we had a teacher there who wrote a grant for these devices, and was actually able to get enough funding for 7 classrooms! The systems work and they are an amazing solution to a very touch monetary question.

Thus the conclusion to this message. A teacher request, an honest effort to find a cost-effective solution, and I find myself now in a whole new environment. Here I am writing a blog using blogger, on a web browser I once swore I never would use, listening to music on Youtube through another tab on that very same browser; that same music laid before me now, through innovation, through Revolution I realize now what has been here the whole time. Change is here. It's not coming, it's not a year out or a decade out, it is living and breathing among us. It is in the eyes of the students that sit before us. Students born into a digital age where the worse technology they EVER had was an IPad 1.

Think on that for just a moment... In my day (I am 37 years old in about 5 hours from writing this) the Atari 2600 was the worst technology of my day. Their worst could display graphics in 3D, in HD, go totally wireless, and interact with a countless host of apps that only enhance its capabilities. This is the digital landscape we live in. Not Y2k, Not 1990, Not 1980, but 2012. So unless the world ends in a little over a month we have an unbelievable, undeniable Revolution unfolding before us...

Aaron