Thanks to an outstanding staff for a great day today. I feel one of my most important jobs is professional development. The more teachers feel comfortable integrating technology, the more it can benefit the learning process. I hope you found the day as beneficial as we hoped it to be.
Month: April 2005
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Are we making a difference?
“…good pedagogy trumps good technology. Bolting technology onto the current industrial model of school, “integrating technology across the curriculum,” has the hidden danger of freezing an outdated curriculum in place longer than it deserves. We need a lot of bright people to spend a long time thinkng about what children should learn in order to make important contributions to our society.”
~Alan NovemberMcLester, Susan. “Q&A with Alan November.” Technology & Learning April 2005 : 64.
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oneword
Ideas are awesome. Thinking out of the box is key to having a unique voice. Oneword.com provides just that – one word – and you have 60 seconds to write the first thing that comes to mind about the word. Very cool. Very fast. Very fun.
Go for it – what do you have to be afraid of?
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Web Tip
Tuesday’s Technology Tip..
(little bits of information to hopefully make your computing life easier)Google has added a new service to its map feature which has satellite images of the mapped location. Type in an address, click on the satellite link, and you get a bird’s eye view, with decent zoom and resolution.
Go to http://maps.google.com
type in the address and click search
when the normal map shows up, look to the upper right of the screen for a link that reads satellite
there you are!Big brother really is watching…
PS The satellite images can be up to 5 or 6 years old. If you check out Heim, you can tell how it is at least a 3 year old picture.
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Which Printer?
Here is a question that comes up all the time. “I just printed – which printer will my stuff come out on?” At home, with one printer, the answer is simple. In school we are networked, which means you can print to just about any printer from any computer. So the question becomes, “which printer did you choose to print to?”
BTW, the answer is to look at the print dialog box before you click print – it tells which printer the computer is currently set to. 🙂
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iSafe
In the last couple of days I have heard about a program called iSafe. In the online world it is increasingly important for students (and adults) to be careful of who they interact with and how much of their real identity they share. iSafe is a program that teaches students how to stay safe while on the Internet. iSafe is a federally funded program that can be incorporated for free into the school. We’ll be looking at it for next year.
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Welcome, SIGTC!
This entry is in anticipation of the SIGTC event on Tappedin this evening. I started this blog last year after NECC. Bernie Dodge’s session on Blogs and Wikis was the catalyst for me. I ended up with teacherhosting.com as the host as that was what the folks at NECC were using last year for the conference blog.
Like many I think the biggest challenge is finding the right voice, or angle, to create and keep up with a blog. My focus is to basically chronicle what we do in our school with technology. Its a small undertaking so far (combined with a hiatus from Nov. – Mar. when my daughter was born) but I’m starting to get into the swing, and really enjoy what there is to offer.
Now if only I can figure out how to change the RSS feeds that appear here…
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Examview and CPS
Mrs. Petersen got into the swing of CPS today using the CDs that accompany the math textbook. Examview is a test question generating program which also links directly to CPS. With a few clicks, you have access to hundreds of questions that correlate to the textbook. In the case of math, one neat additional feature is the ability to regenerate questions with different values for extra practice. Mrs. Petersen’s students were clicking their way to better math knowledge!
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TTT
Tuesday’s Technology Tip..
(little bits of information to hopefully make your computing life easier)Web tip: A term you hear regularly related to the internet is “blog.” A blog is short for web log. Blogs are websites or web pages that act as an online diary, where the person who maintains it regularly posts thoughts, comments, pictures, files, or whatever. Blogs can be on any topic as decided by its author. People have personal blogs to share regular family news, teachers have students keep blogs of daily writing, and much more. Blogs are usually formatted so the most recent entry is at the top of the page, and previous entries are listed in reverse chronological order below.
PS Yes, you are reading this in a blog!
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Ethnomathematics
I was introduced to a cool new conept in an online professional development chat – Ethnomathematics. Simply put, it is the study of math through world cultures. The chat I was in revolved around art and its relation to math.
The Ethnomath Digital Library contains links to many sites with world connections to math. Click here to see it
Oriental Rugs and Symmetry – very cool! Check them out here
Math is everywhere – not just the US, but the world – Ethnomathematics brings math and the world together.
