3 Wishes...

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You are spending your last days off for summer on a beautiful beach in Hawaii (I can dream can't I?). You decide to take a stroll along the coast in order to take in the scenery. You are enjoying the walk, digging your toes into the wet sand as the tide kicks up to your bare ankles. Suddenly you wince in pain as your toe stubs an object buried in the sand. You reach down and uncover a lamp. It looks old, but through the aged dirt and grime there seems to be some writing etched into the side. You attempt to clear the dirt away with your hand when suddenly the lamp begins to shake and a large burst of smoke envelopes you. A genie has flown out of the lamp and proceeds to offer you three wishes, however there is a catch. The genie explains that he is a former educator, and explains that while you have three wishes you must use those wishes to improve your classroom. You can't wish for smarter students or a new room (not the most talented genie) but you can wish for new items to be put in your room. What do you wish for? Here is what I would ask for:

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#1 IdeaPaint

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I fell in love with this stuff from the moment I heard of it. IdeaPaint is a paintable whiteboard. After having read several reviews on the product I have a high confidence that it work exactly as advertised. Imagine having a white board the size of the wall, letting students create giant graphic organizers and illustrate ideas on a canvas as big as their imagination. Or how about painting desks or tables in your room. Allowing students to collaborate by spilling their mind directly onto the table. Check out the video below to see IdeaPaint in action.

Students draw on their desk because they simply can't keep the ideas in their own head. Let them free their mind and decorate their own space without the fear of having to clean it all up. Plus it can be really enjoyable to just let loose over once in a while.

Coloring! This kid loves it!

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#2 Surface Table

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Let's take the idea of student desk interaction a little further. Several years ago Microsoft introduced their Surface table. A large multi-touch interactive table which allows users to interact with photos, videos and files using natural gestures. This would have an incredible impact in a classroom, allowing multiple students to interact with the lesson simultaneously. Below is a video of a surface table in a classroom

Here is the best part of this whole post, a link from Maximum PC which not only describes the theory behind how a multi-touch surface  works (with little illustrations) but also how to construct one yourself for around $500. Considering these tables cost several thousand dollars a piece $500 is nothing. The best part is the build can be accomplished with a few basic tools and some general know-how about electronics. I am currently working on funding to have my senior computer tech class build one of these in order to show off at the yearly "open-house" my school has. This would be a show stopper and I think that my students would be able to handle this build. 

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#3 Tablets

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I am lucky enough to have a forward thinking school with a 1-1 initiative starting this year. I do think however that netbooks are quickly becoming a thing of the past as people notice that tablets fit perfectly in that phone-to-laptop niche.

Now I don't have a definite stance on what tablet would be most useful in a school setting (I'm not exactly an Apple fanboy). For a few months I heard a lot of talk about a company called Kno who was getting into the tablet game with a focus on education however they soon back tracked (the tablets were incredibly expensive and looked rather unwieldy) and said they would focus only on the software.

Turns out that was probably a good idea. Kno recently announced they are up and running and they are not taking the challenge lightly. They offer over 10,000 textbooks on everything from Math to Computer Technology, and these aren't just online versions of old textbooks. There are iPad, online and Facebook flavors, with each getting great new features often. Students can highlight, annotate and mark-up any place in the book and then share those mark-ups with each other via various methods. While the iPad is the only supported tablet right now I predict that we will be seeing great things from Kno, and I believe that they may become a standard in schools in the near future.

What would you wish for in your classroom? Let me know in the comments.