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Add comment September 28th, 2008

Analyze this…

Thank you for Jerry’s blog post on how he used wordle in his classroom. What an opportunity for student’s to analyze the election season.  Below you will see both Obama’s and McCain’s acceptance speeches from the conventions.  Think of the class discussion this could spark!

McCain

Obama

3 comments September 17th, 2008

All ready a month! Goals for Technology Professional Development

If you can believe it we have all ready been in school for a month. As I travel around to the schools in my cluster, I am formulating professional development options for each school. Its a lot like following an IEP. Each school is very different in how the teachers like to receive professional development, whether its after school, during planning, before school or when ever they can get it.

This time of year leaves my head swimming with ideas of tech-savvy kids in my head or the hope there are tech-savvy kids on our schools. How can we meet their needs? Or better yet, how can I meet the needs of the teachers to meet the needs of the students? That is a big task.

So this year, my goal for my schools is to bring a more personalized touch. Bring technology professional development teachers can use… don’t just show up with a new ‘tool.’  Show up with standards-based activities to place in the teacher’s hand or shared drive so a teacher can use now! Of course there is some “training” that will have to take place in the traditional sense but overall I want to create activities that are ready to use.

The balance will be… interesting to say the least. I am supposed to spend 80% of my time in the schools working with teachers and students. That leaves 20% to plan and learn. Guess what? Meetings take up 20%. When I do the math that doesn’t add up. Can anyone tell me how that adds up?

 Image Credits: Jill Greenseth.Goals.<http://flickr.com/photos/blah_oh_well/1472885631/sizes/l/>

Technorati Tags: professional development goals richland1 sansonetti techforschool

Add comment September 10th, 2008

For the First Time…

With the Democratic and Republican National Conventions over I hope that you are planning to get out and vote in November… Maybe its your first time. I hope this election season inspires you to vote. Thanks to CNN’s League of First Time Voters for teaming up with Daughtry. Yeah, I know this is a educational technology blog… but this election season in the most inspiring election since the depression (in my opinion). Its not the first time I will vote, but its the first time I will vote in an election without a Bush or Clinton.

Technorati Tags: election2008 DNC RNC Daughtry CNN Clinton Bush

Add comment September 6th, 2008

Have you seen Chrome?

What was at one time an April Fool’s Day prank from Google is now reality… Google released, their open source web browser, Chrome today.  I downloaded it to see what all the fuss is about… and I must say, I like it. The browser is fast! It’s simple in design and uses tabbed browsing. There are somethings I would like to see, such as, a button for my saved Google Bookmarks.Who knows there may be a way but I have only had it on my computer for an hour. I don’t have it totally figured out yet. One thing I like is you can create shortcuts for your desktop to gmail or any other web page you would like.  There is an incognito mode which allows you to click without putting the clicks in your history…So far I like it… I miss apps like twitterfox and my google bookmarks button but I can only imagine it will be available soon.Looks like at this time its only available for XP and Vista users… sorry Mac and Linux! What do you think?  

Technorati Tags: google_chrome

1 comment September 2nd, 2008