A few years ago I was at the CUE conference with Discovery, and was part of a little scavenger hunt we had at the booth. People had to come up to me and tell me one innovative way they were using technology in order to earn my stamp. By far, the most innovative story I heard just happened to be someone about as far away from the cutting edge as possible.

Essentially, his district was clearing out the old technology. No, we’re not talking about eMacs, or Beige G3’s, or Purple iMacs, or even 5400’s. We’re talking about Apple IIe’s. Not just a few, 20 of them. This teacher (boy do I wish I had his name still) said, “Pass them over to me. I’ll take them.” SO they set up the computers around the edge of his classroom. While they couldn’t access the internet, they had basic wordprocessing programs available and some fun reading and math games. Yes, he could stand up proudly and say that he had launched a 1:1 initiative in his classroom!

Which leads me to an email conversation I had with Brian Mull yesterday. He pointed out that regardless of the age of the equipment, if you have an internet connection you have access to a wealth of web2.0 applications that require very low overhead. So we were wondering from a very practical standpoint whether there were any teachers out there who are using new online applications on ‘older’ computers, and how well they ran.

SO, if the computers in your classroom are 3 or more years old, leave a comment sharing:
1) How old your computers are and what type they are (PC, Mac, etc)
2) What online applications you use (Google Apps, Picnik, Slideshare, Zoho, etc..)
3) How the experience has been. Just some anecdotal notes about successes and failures.

I think there are quite a few schools on the far side of the digital divide that would be interested in hearing your experiences!