October 2007 Blog Posts (133)

I am not sure how many people are using these in a K-12 environment but at the university level thay are being used to good effect. They allow teachers to see (more or less) how they are doing, as they teach, by giving students the opportunity to answer questions throughout the lecture. The ability to quickly survey knowledge can help determine (on the fly) how the content needs to be adjusted.

My experience, having been on both ends of the SRS is that, as a student with a clicker…

Avatar Webcam Applications:

To express unique characterization to project-based activity teachers can have students use Avatar characters to write and read the content of the lesson or script. The script is a…

Over the past few years I have been reviewing various open source software applications. In the next series of blog’s I will share some of my findings which will include open source software applications for art, astronomy, computer science, games, internet, keyboarding, multimedia, and office. The first open source software…

From http://www.edtechvision.org

Years ago when I taught 4th grade I participated in a classroom exchange called "Postcard Geography". My students eagerly awaited postcards that we exchanged with schools all across the US. We created a large bulletin board with a map of the US and pinned the postcards next to the city is came from. It was fun to read about the area around the school and we often referred to our postcards as we studied the…

Creativity and Technology Integration

In most of us there lies a realm of creativity especially within children. Products of creativity are within all of us and the expression of divergent thought can be framed in both its quality to originality and appropriateness. Each of us would like to take…

I have started a Christmas Around the World Project at Voicethread. If you are interested in sharing, click on the link below, and share your Christmas traditions with us. It is really easy to get started, and a very innovative approach to using Web 2.0 in your classroom powered by Voicethread. If you I have also started a Christmas Around the World Wiki, where you can contribute to a collection of customs,…

A HOT topic where I am is integrating technology! HOT in many ways...including COOL and controversial. I just read a forum asking how to get teachers to join us in our exciting endeavors of integrating. I began a reply and ....so much of the past week's frustration came out and in the end I thought I resolved myself to live and let live. More on that in a minute. I cut and pasted my reply here…

http://www.edusim3D.com

As a Director of Technology I have to wear many hats and maintain a limited budget. So, I am always looking for ways to get educational based applications that are educational based and provide higher level order of thinking challenges. Well, one weekend I spent time searching for open source software and came across the article I have uploaded. It provides open source software for PCs, Apples, and Linux OS systems. I have read through the 77 pages and downloaded several recommended…

YOU'LL NEVER FIND A PAGE LIKE THIS ONE!!!!!!!!

$$$GUTTA$$$

Friday, good old Fridays. I was more than happy to see the weekend come. It was defintily a stressful week as per the class had been reviewing how to write an effective introductary paragraph, reviewing grammar, and going over the assessment test that the students must complete in their 8th grade year. Friday consisted of taking two exams, one vocabulary test and the assessment itself. This assessment task asked for students to read "Paul…

I’ve been using classroom Walk-Throughs for the past 7 months in order to get to get into the classrooms in my school, get to know what the teachers are doing, familiarize myself with the curricula in the

various grades and just acquaint myself with how this form of

supervision might work for me.

Now, I started with the book The Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through by Corlyn J. Downey. Like most administrators, I read through the book, worked through the different…