(posted and mailed)

Hi, Max,

Thanks for your reports and your fine work at the school! 

I'm glad to hear you've been working with both the "homemade" Wii-remote IWB (Interactive White Board -- apparently the generic term the edu-tech community is settling on) and the Smart Board "brand name" IWB.  All of us CUIP staff would be interested in hearing any comparisons you've noticed in how they get used, how teachers think about them, and so on.  

Good catch on that laptop/projector settings business.  I wonder if this is the same teacher who was in the lab asking Ms. Zivko about projector bulbs when I was there at one point -- we were giving her generic answers about bulb life, but it's possible this was the same teacher and the actual issue was what you found on the computer, while we were all accepting the appearance that it was a projector problem.  

The laptops are coming from an initiative that was started over the summer.  The new CEO of CPS mandated more online assessment of student achievement and preparedness (you may have been hearing about the Scantron testing), and schools were surveyed for their technology resources in place, with some supplementary resources being provided to some schools ... and as we see, being rolled out on an extended schedule.   So these laptops must be made available for the online assessments.  But when not needed fr that, they can be used for other tech/edu purposes at the school -- so there are indeed some decisions for the Ray administration (and tech advisors) to make.

  Thanks,

   ==Mitch