15 Educator Discounts

If you're an educator, and you're even remotely like me (thrifty, with a family, and a need to save some $$), then here is a list of the most popular educator discounts (thanks to friends at SimpleK12)

1. Barnes & Noble Educator Program - Up to 25% off
2. Banana Republic - 15% off 
3. Ann Taylor Loft - 15% off
4. Apple Products - education pricing available
5. FedEx Office - 15% off
6. The Container Store - special teacher discounts throughout the year
7. Hancock Fabrics - 10% off 
8. J.Crew - 15% off 
9. Jo-Ann's - 15% off 
10. Michael's - 15% off 
11. Office Depot -  various teacher discounts and offers
12. OfficeMax - Teacher Appreciation Days around the back-to-school season. 
13. Staples - various offers and Teacher Appreciation Days 
14. The Limited - 15% off
15. STA Travel - various teacher discounts

Any other good ones out there? As educators, you must share yours!

Tablets in Classrooms - Some Research

In going through my Pocket web clippings, I came back around to this article from Edudemic. They have ever so kindly culminated six examples of tablet classroom integration and provided links for further reading.  This is a must read for anyone needing justification for tablet integration or for those that love to read about technology integration and their persuasion on learning.

6 Examples Of Successful Classroom Tablet Integration

Android Tablets in the Classroom

We finally received our set of forty Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1" Android tablets!  This classroom set of tablets was purchased from Logical Choice months ago - unfortunately, they failed to notify us that they were on back order so we simply had to wait.  My plan is this:

• A rolling cart with a full class set of devices, capable of connecting to the internet and the school network anywhere on campus
• 6 teachers to integrate the technology directly into 6 different content areas
• Math, Agriculture, Art, English, Social Sciences, and Foreign Language are all on board!
• Troubleshooting the devices - how do we set them up so the students cannot destroy them?! Good question, I know.

My district IT Tech specialist quickly placed an "app locker" on all of the devices and I selected a pair of teachers to troubleshoot any potential issues over spring break. My instructions were simple, try to think like your students and see where you can get into trouble on the devices, taking notes along the way. We go to break tomorrow so I'm interested to see what they come up with upon our return.

I sent my teachers off with hacking directions and began tinkering myself last night. I immediately broke out of the app locker by uninstalling it through a number of menu commands, and had the open source Android OS at my mercy. At that point, I realized we needed something more; more robust and more educationally focused. Some quick research turned up one product called TabPilot.

I immediately hooked up with another Jarrett (I know, crazy right, even spelled the same as my name!) who turned out to be the president of the company.  We worked through setting up the systems and they provided me with a 10-device free Standard Edition of the app to tryout.  As it turns out, this is a great product that does exactly what I want it to.  It is relatively inexpensive for our set of 40 devices, so I'm pretty pleased thus far.  I simply need to convince IT that it is a better solution, and then of course, find the funding!

As note, I'll be blogging about my Android Tablets in our classrooms as we progress beyond setup, implementation, and eventually evidence of improved student learning. Feel free to follow along on this blog, or on Twitter under #AndroidsInClass.

Ipad 1:1 Schools

Are there any 1:1 ipad schools? Are there any 1:1 ipad schools receiving grants to fund implementation? Are there any 1:1 ipad schools where implementation is significantly increasing student learning?

I am equally intrigued as I am skeptical. You see, I spent time as a teacher in a school in Nevada where a 1:1 MacBook initiative was rolled out to the Freshman class my last year there. I taught Computer Science and knew the initiative would immediately create new,  unique, and exciting learning opportunities for this group of students. Do ipads do the same? Do they do it bettet?

I am more than happy to do some work and tech training with a teacher on a trial basis, but I have no idea where to start. Besides asking my principal to shell out $15k to supply a classroom with ipads, do I have other options at the state or federal level? Or even private grants? What about Perkins? As you can see, I have lots of questions and few answers on this topic. Anybody have advice?

Tweet of the Day

So I have been thinking, "how can I contribute a little slice of what I find to be the most interesting tweets or articles I read all day?" Of course, the natural answer is to simply retweet those profound words of wisdom or thought-provoking articles. Well, I was looking for a little better way to keep track of these daily educational gems, so I spawned my own hashtag, #MrD-ToD.

Now, I acknowledge that I lack a few creative bones in my body and am barely original. However, I'd like to think my hashtag is fairly self explanatory and should be easy to follow. If you happen by chance to be the other person (besides myself of course) following this hashtag, you can expect to read some pretty excellent daily musings, most educational in nature.

Contrary to popular belief, I do perform a bit of research prior to jumping into things of this nature. I don't want to be that, guy that just created the 2,096,521st "Tweet of the Day" for education. Much to my surprise, I found nobody else providing something of the like. Well, guess I am a bit original today. Up, up, and away with Mr. Dooley's Tweet (s) of the Day!