What the Tech!

Complete the following survey so that I have information about your prior knowledge. It does not matter if you are a RPDIT participant, you may complete the survey as well.

• Google Earth *PRO* is FREE for Educators! | Welcome to NCS-Tech!

  Information about how to use Google Earth Pro for free! It has some great overlays that I am sure will help you as you begin the year with georgraphy and on into your units on explorers!

  tags: google_earth, edtech

• Creatively Speaking: Sir Ken Robinson on the Power of the Imaginative Mind | Edutopia

  Discussion of how we need not reform education but rather transform it into something new to meet the challenges of the future. Short speech by Sir Ken Robinson that is about 15-minutes long.

  tags: edtech, creativity

• Join PBwiki summer camp and earn a free classroom wiki - The Daily Peanut

  This is a great opportunity to earn a free pbwiki for your classroom. Join in with the PBwiki Summer Camp to learn more about how to use wikis in the classroom.

  tags: edtech

• Poem: The Average Child

  The challenge… to make all children…feel more than average!

  tags: edtech

• FORTUNE: How I Work

  Read a few of these fellow workers outside of the field of education. It gives interesting insight into the way they work and only a glimer of what skills are needed in the workplace from now and into the future.

  tags: productivity, edtech

• Imagination Cubed

  Interesting drawing tool that allow you to draw online and then send it to a friend via email. At that point they can edit the drawing and send it back. Might be cool for group brainstorming.

  tags: collaboration, Web2.0, drawing, edtech

• WritingFix: Interactive Writing Prompts & Lessons for Teachers and Students

  Amazing resources for writing! THis site includes a Random Daily Prompt Generator, Writing Connections for Picture Book & Chapter Book Lessons, Constructed Response resources to prepare students for high stakes testing, Brain-based Writing prompts to access qualities of the right-brainand left-brain and many other great links for the writing teacher!

  tags: writing, edtech

• Research on Edublogging for K-12 Teachers - Classroom 2.0

  Research study on blogging.

  tags: edublogging, edtech

• Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 sites directory

  This a comprehensive directory of Web 2.0 sites that do a variety of jobs.

  tags: web2.0, directory, edtech

• MYVisit 2007-2008 Series

  Virtual author series. features live creators, live interaction, and live learning.

  tags: authors, edtech

• movingforward » ProfessionalDevelopmentManifesto

  Moving Forward is correct. This is a great wiki that promotes an ed tech philosophy of student learning, sound pedagogy, and research based strategies. I see it as a process of getting our priorieties in order.

  tags: pd, edtech

• Copyright issues in the classroom and beyond

  THis is a great source for understanding copyright issues in the classroom and beyond. It is important for educators to set a good example of digital citizenship!

  tags: copyright, edtech

• The LOT’s and HOT’s for Assessment | Educational Origami

  Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy discussion. Blog entry that gives a variety of technology applications and how they rank on Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.

  tags: bloomstaxonomy, edtech

• NECC 2008 Webcasts

  What in the heck is necc? It is the annual National Educational Computing Conference. I like many others did not have a chance to attend NECC 2008 in San Antonio, so I will attend via webcast in an asynchronous manner, so can you!

  tags: conference, necc2008, edtech

• create a mixtape / mixwit

  Remember Creating Mix Tapes for your BF & BFF? Now you can do it in the virtual world also! I am not sure of any educational value…but it is fun!

  tags: audio, edtech

• Infinite Thinking Machine-Googleplex

  Blog entry highlighting the many great presentations and resources provided by Google Certified Teachers

  tags: Google, edtech

• Materials (Google Teacher Academy Resources)

  Great Resource for all of the many applications provided by Google.

  tags: google, academy, edtech

• Google Docs (Google Teacher Academy Resources)

  Google Docs is a fabulous application that can help one collaborate with several individuals at one time on the same document. It is also a place to store documents online and have access to them even if your own computer is not available!

  tags: google, edtech, docs

• Communities of practice

  This year I hope to develop two communities of practices as we work to develop resources, strategies, and support for integrating specific technology hardware.

  tags: collaboration, learning, COP, edtech

I have always found it humorous that the common citizen believes that the three best reasons for teaching are June, July, & August. Last time I checked most schools adjourn  in mid -June and teachers report back mid-August, so at most a teacher has 8 weeks of “free time”. And I will be honest the last two weeks in June and on into July at least to the 4th  hold for me some of the best unstructured time on the planet! But a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and most teachers I know or at least the ones I hang out with are always “thinkin’, plannin’ & plottin’! Sorry folks we just can’t shut if off. Summer is a great time for attending an institute, taking a tech workshop, or attending a class. It gives participants time to ponder and reflect how they hope to use it in their class during the upcoming year.  Maybe you are not planning to attend any such meeting, and you don’t have to do your professional development in a traditional manner. Starting July 7th I hope to bring you several post on a variety of topics that may be useful to you as you peculate your morning coffee  and ideas for your class for the coming year.  One new feature for this summer is What the Tech Surfin”. It contains  my “finds” for the week as I have surfed the web, so look for it each Sunday. Take a minute to check out the sites and think about how you might use them to instruct students!

• cliotech: Digital Storytelling as THE Disruptive Change Agent for the 21st Century Learning Revolution - Annotated

  tags: digitalstorytelling, necc2008, edtech

  • Great idea - Use a password-protected Ning to be able to post student-created stories in a safe location
    • I love this idea of creating a ning for students to house their creations. Digital storytelling is a wonderful way to support student writing. - post by littlekk72

For several years Franklin County Public Schools has sponsored the Regional Professional Development Institute for Technology, and this summer is no exception! This year’s theme is 21st Century Learning: The World is Flat. RPDIT is a professional development conference that allows participants to sign up for up to five 3-hour sessions on a variety of topics that focus on how to integrate specific technologies into one’s classroom instructions. It is an opportunity to earn recertification points and increase you level of knowledge of technology integration. One of the best aspects of this conference is that it is FREE ! YES, FREE! So if you schedule allows you to take a drive out to Franklin County July 22-25, 2008, then Click here for brochure and registration information. Hope to see you there!

As part of my own personal professional development, I first entered the blogosphere. And I have gone through many phases since the start of this journey. Now, it is time to become a better commenter! So my Sunday night post is officially dedicated to progress as I work to complete the assigned task each day.

Day 1: Self-Audit–

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week? UMMM-Honestly- it is slim to none!
  

• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?I just recently learned you could track your comments, SO How? I am taking suggestions…an sure I will end up using coComment, and would take any suggestions or reasoning for why or how I should use this information once I have access to it! Can you see why now, I feel as if I need some personal PD in this area!

• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week? If I do comment on blogs is is on those that are just starting out like me, because I do know that it is powerful when and a nice feeling when you do get comments.After reading Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments, I plan to focus on first adding comments that add to the discussion and lend specifically a new “piece” to the puzzle/conversation.

Day 2- Comment on a New Blog! -

The task today is to comment on a new blog! Well, I have to decided to post a comment I read often but dare not leave a comment. Since I have not been an active commenter I feel I have a lot to make up for…so it will be important to return to those blogs that have inspired me the most to create my own blog and comment, comment,comment.

Day3- Sign Up for a Comment Service Tracking Service–

I have to say that Day 3 has been a challenge for me due to technical issues. I tried to install coComment an then had a complete meltdown of Firefox, but I finally got it working but have chosen to use the bookmarklet instead! It seems to working much better for my situation! I am absolutely thrilled with the widget that allows the most current comments to be viewed from the sidebar. Since my primary target audience is the teachers I service within my district, maybe as they see others comment they too will want to add their words of wisdom! I am finishing this post on Monday afternoon due to the technical difficulties I had last night and will continue to work to catch up on my daily tasks!

R.I.P Greenfield Server

I would like to express my deepest condolences to the teachers and staff of Greenfield Elementary in regards to your recent loss. For those of you who do not know, yesterday at about 12:00 the official word came down that the server was officially dead and all data was irretrievable. All documents that were saved in teachers’ home files (the Z Drive) & in the Classes 07-08 folder were lost. As you can imagine this was devastating news. While the cause of the death is inconclusive, it is believed that it may have been caused by an electrical surge during one of our recent storms. Teachers at RMMS know just how they feel! The also have suffered through a similar situation, and lost all of their data earlier in the year. Click on the above link to view another perspective on similar events. The events leading to the demise of this server could not have been predicted or avoided, and just like other “natural” disasters no one is to blame. But I ask you to take time to reflect and ask , “What can we learn from these events?

As I talked to Leah about the events of the day, we recalled a blog entry that seemed to sum it up, “Never Rely on Any Single Point of Failure” . A single point of failure is anything that, if it fails, then whatever you are doing is dramatically or fatally hindered. Here is my advice. Our servers are on most days very reliable and relatively safe place to store documents. But if you choose to only save to the server and something happens to the data then you have relied on a single point of failure. It is good practice to back up your files to another location in addition to the server. Some possible alternative locations are flash drives, CDs, or the D drive on one machine in your room. I have to admit that this is something that I need to work on also! In the next few weeks, try to get in the habit at the end of each day or week to back up the files to an additional location. I know how hard each and everyone of you work on your documents and projects and would hate to see these items vanish into thin air.

Back up… so you don’t crack up!

Imagine- you are on your commute home and you think of an email you should have sent out to your colleagues. You hope you remember to do it when you get home later on in the evening. You think to yourself, “Well, it sure would be nice if I could use my cell phone to record my voice and have it sent in text form to my email account” Well you can and you do not even need to have Internet on your phone!

Jott is just too cool 4 school! And it is free! This post is for anyone who wishes they could transcribe their voice into text. ADMINISTRATORS this could be a cool tool for you too! Once you have a free account, Jott allows the account user to call a specific phone number (Add it on speed dial, I did!) and leave a message for yourself, anyone of your contacts, even a group. Or maybe you want to add to a “to do list” and have it emailed to you! It then transcribes your message into text via an email. It even has the option of sending text messages…but I have not had much luck with that, but you Verizon users might have more luck! It also allows those of us who use Twitter to post an entry via our phone!

TGIF!