Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Today, Finn McKenty a strategist for Kaleidescope , a product design company, and Greener Grass , gave me a quick view of some concepts for future classroom design. I felt my whole world turn over. I've been telling my students that one day we'll laugh about how we had computers on our desks b/c they will become integrated into everything - walls, desks, and we just won't need the PC anymore, but I didn't really UNDERSTAND what I was saying. Now, maybe, I do. Take a look at this board. Just a whiteboard???? NO!!!! Now, look at this picture: What you see are individual, microsoft surface enabled BOARDS in the upright position and individual, Microsoft Surface enabled DESKS in the background. Boards are desks, desks are boards.  Upright, they separate the room and allow for group and individual projects.  Laying flat, they are desks for more traditional environments.  And, they roll. Some schools have janitors that put dots on the fl...

Listening to the Business Week Technology in Review of the FlipStart , I simply had to stop folding laundry and blog. This little device has a 5 hour battery life and wifi access built in along with a regular keyboard (albeit a little smaller than regular). You can really do just about anything on this little gizmo, write, research, surf. The drawbacks according to the podcast: the Windows interface design isn't great for anything smaller than a 12" display -- this one has a 5 1/2 inch display however using the zoom feature with web pages seems to be quite nice. In terms of category, this device sits somewhere in between the Smart Phone and the Laptop Computer. I think the future will rest in the hand of our students! However, I still think that such devices will somehow interface via wi fi with full sized projected keyboards (see image) and the super-thin monitors (see image) that could be built literally into student desks. And yes, that is a real, fujitsu monitor! OK, b...