The Digital Immersion Grade 8’s and I are building a Environmental Sustainability Project in partnership with the City of Vancouver, Apple Canada, and Cisco Systems.

We are very excited about the technology, but beyond the technology and the new tools (iPads) is the very real and fulfilling work of making a difference. This is how we should be teaching our students and helping them explore potential careers and interests through meaningful work. The City of Vancouver has an excellent reputation around the world as a green city. What we aim to do is either take something that already exist and make it better or better yet invent something new that we can call our own. Possibly an initiative that can be realized with a little time and a lot of hard work.

So far, I am loving the new cart (Thanks Charlie Tang @ Apple Canada!), but getting apps on to 30 iPads is proving to be quite a labour intensive and time consuming task. I think Apple can do better with an Education version of iTunes or perhaps a third-party plugin that will allow for mass simultaneous syncs.

As a side note,  I love the Find My iPhone app. I can track every iPad and the cart through GPS and a map. If iPads go missing or is misplaced, I can track it and send a message and/or lock it out and/or wipe the data. This feature is available through MobileMe Free Account and is available for iPhones, iPod Touch, and iPads. I am going to invent a game for this feature. Now all the iPads need is a camera so I can use QR Codes.