Monday, June 29, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/30/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

NECC day 3

After all of that the SIGTC forum was good. Well received by all, I think. 

One of the best parts of NECC is meeting people in your PLN. By going to the 'Bloggers Cafe' you can see many of your virtual friends. Many of us have been using Plurk to make notes about sessions and keeping our peers outside of NECC abreast of what is going on.

Keynote address good last night. Now in the SIGTC business meeting, I am now the president-elect. I was going to resign from the board, but here I am.

Have a panel in a few hours, but will see the vendors before that.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Second Day NECC

Second day. Met with SIGTC leaders to discuss our forum this AM, now we are waiting outside of the room where the forum will be held. We will not be able to get in until about a half hour before hand, which is not good. We usually have a few hours in the room before hand, but there is a SIG leadership meeting in there now. Guess we could not have scheduled the rooms better? A couple of our people we need to meet with are in this meeting too. Bummer. Would be nice to have some cooperation between ISTE and our SIG. But this seems to be status quo. 

Edubloggercon was great. Posted many links onto my diigo page. Got to meet with a Diigo person yesterday, and we discussed some things that could be tweaked. Very nice and helpful. 

Got here Saturday at about 6 am yesterday, made it to my hotel at 3pm figured to take a nap, woke up at 10pm. guess that was a bit longer than I wanted. Well rested and ready to go.

Apparently the group that reviewed sessions for this years NECC, had my session listed in their top 3, not sure why I got turned down, that sure seems strange. Should I be paranoid? Sort of confusing, I have not be approved for my sessions, yet seem to be listed high every year, interesting, wonder who doesn't like me? 

Will post later on, need to do it from here, my hotel has plugin internet and I don't have a patch cable. So it goes

Friday, June 26, 2009

NECC '09

I leave tonight for what is one of the year's highlights, NECC. This year it will be in Washington DC.

My wonderful wife will not be with me this year, but will be next year in Denver for NECC '10.


Every year I learn more than I thought possible at NECC, not just from sessions, but from others. The sharing done in informal sessions is great, we meet people in our PLN that have been names attached to 140 character plurks or twitters. The big kick-off is edubloggercon on Saturday.

I hope to do a fair amount of blogging over the next few days, keeping myself and others aware of what is going on. There will be some Diigo links, but more blogging than normal. By the way, at the SIGTC forum on Sunday, I will be doing a mini session on Diigo. Also I will be on a panel on Monday about Tech leaders.

So follow this space, contact me, or see you at NECC

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/26/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/25/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/24/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/23/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/22/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/21/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/19/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/18/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/16/2009

  • From the Committee on Education and Labor here in the US. Mark your calendars! This is June 16 at 10 am EDT.

    "WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday, June 16 to examine how technology and innovative education tools are transforming and improving education in America.



    Immediately following the hearing, members of the media are invited to attend an education technology demonstration where they can have hands-on experience using cutting-edge education technology products.





    WHAT: Hearing on “The Future of Learning: How Technology is Transforming Public Schools”



    WHO: Jennifer Bergland, chief technology officer, Bryan Independent School District, Bryan, TX

    Aneesh Chopra, chief technology officer, White House Office for Science and Technology

    Dr. Wayne Hartschuh, executive director, Delaware Center for Educational Technology, Dover, DE

    Scott Kinney, vice president, Discovery Education, Silver Spring, MD

    John McAuliffe, general manager, Educate Online Learning, LLC, Baltimore, MD

    Lisa Short, science teacher, Gaithersburg Middle School, Montgomery County Public Schools, Gaithersburg, MD

    Abel Real, student, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC



    WHEN: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

    10:00 a.m., EDT



    WHERE: House Education and Labor Committee Hearing Room

    2175 Rayburn House Office Building

    Washington, D.C.



    **Note: This hearing will be webcast live from the Education and Labor Committee website. You can access the webcast when the hearing begins at 10:00 am EDT from http://edlabor.house.gov**"

    Tags: education, learning, technology, edu_news

  • Tags: muraldaula, mural, aula, classroom, displays, education, social_networking, web_2.0

  • The Engineering is Elementary project will produce 20 curricular units. The table below describes the units' focal science and engineering fields, the storybook title, and the country in which the unit is set.

    Tags: education, stem, elementary, teaching, learning, engineering, lessonplans, science, technology, math

  • High stakes testing could have pushed some schools in Georgia to high stakes cheating. There are more than these 4 that many are calling suspicious with meteoric rises in scores from some schools that I and others personally know are not getting the job done with the content they are teaching for students.

    Warning to parents: Beware of test scores - they can be manipulated. Look at your child and use your common sense as to whether they are receiving a good education.

    Tags: education, learning, testing, crct, edu_news


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/14/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/12/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/10/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/09/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/08/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Diigo bookmarks for today 06/07/2009


Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.

Friday, June 5, 2009

This year's ID-ten-T Error All Star Team

In the world of technology, we have a special error code that we use to identify some issues; we refer to this as an ID-ten-T error. Pretty much the same as a PEBKAC error, or any of these

There are many places where people list similar errors; one I read occasionally is the Shark Bait forum

We came up with the all ID-10-T team. Are these real people? Maybe. Mind you these are not the only issues they have brought to us, just a sample.
Starting five-

1. Teacher (believe it or not working on an EDD, but in School Administration so it makes sense). We get many calls from her. Three times this year “my SmartBoard is not working”. We have given up trying to diagnose using the phone or Email or Remotely. Things just get too confusing that way. For this problem we have found that the SmartBoard issue is fixed by showing her how to activate the projector using the function keys. We then point out the little icons on the keys. Each time she is amazed at this and writes it down for “the next time it happens”. Her latest was that she thought the image of her projector was too small, and therefore needed a new projector. The projector is on a cart. We demonstrated how we could change the size of the image by moving the cart back and fourth. That was amazing and wanted to know if that is a new feature on projectors. I did not want to show her the zoom function on the projector. That would be too much.

2. Secretary One of the nicest people you want to meet but has troubles with letting things work. She oftentimes needs take notes during meetings, which are projected on a screen during the meeting. In the meeting room, I have cables labeled with which two cables need to be plugged into a laptop. The VGA and Ethernet cables. These have tags on them, and next to the cords are pictures and diagrams and descriptions. Within a few moments of her starting a meeting, I am called in because “it is not working” Again, phone calls make things worse and more confusing. When I walk into the meeting room, usually with community members in attendance, she is freaking out and flustered. I look at the cables and see that she has rearranged most of them, so there an all sorts of miss-wired connections. Once I put the correct cables on the meeting table, with a note and diagram showing where to plug things in, and an offer to hook it up for her. I was then called in with a mess, and the two cables sat on the table unused. One of her better ones was “the printer is not working” After talking to her, I was more confused. Asked if there were any messages or blinking lights, of course not. Went over to her building, and sure enough, the display screen said “Add Paper”. I added paper and about 10 copies of the same thing came out of the printer.

3. Nurse. It is bad enough that she has a picture of Clay Aitkin on her desktop, but she has the amazing ability to delete applications, even without permissions to do so. Need to see her in action sometime. Several years ago, our student information system was client-server based. Every few weeks, it disappeared from her computer. It is amazing how these programs disappear on some people and not others. The client for this program was a PIA to install, with an ugly install code and then pointing to various volumes on the server. Finally I came up with a solution for her. I installed the client in a hidden file, made an alias in another file, made an alias of this in another file, made an alias of this in her applications folder, and then an alias of this on the desktop. Generally after this, she would only lose two or three of the aliases, and restoring was easier.

4. Teacher aid. Did you know that you could jam a USB cable into a fire wire port? Neither did I, but with some force it can go in there. She had run out of USB ports, so what the heck? A port is a port. She often calls with the problem that she “Cannot get onto Email, my server, the student information system, and the Internet” So you are off the network? Well I don’t know I can’t get into Email, my server, the student information system, and the Internet” OK so you are off the network. A flustered sound of babbling comes out of the phone. She is on the phone, which is VoIP, so the network is good. Did you shut off your computer last night? I always turn it off…(usually meaning the monitor). Go over how to turn off and restart the computer…. again, suddenly it works! I am the miracle worker. She is best dealt with over the phone or equipment repair when not in the room. Has a difficult time with personal space, and tends to blabber about nothing.

5. Principal-The team leader. Has not a clue about how things work, but refuses to listen to any information. He has a laptop, and keeps telling us it needs to be updated. This is of course done verbally, not via email or repair request. No problem. When can we take the computer to update it? It turns out the answer is never. He really wants it updated and the newer version of Office put onto it, but we can’t have it. Sort of a dilemma. We finally get it, but he is afraid that we will read his documents and email. Does not remember we can read all the Email we want and get into any computer file we want, and really have no desire to look at his documents, who has the time? So about a half-hour after getting the laptop, he wants it back so he can get back to work. Guess the desktop is not good enough for him. He expects his teachers to read his email within an hour of his sending it, yet he reads email about once every two or three days.

There are many that may move onto the list for next year. One odd thing, the good users, who rarely have any issues, thinks they are being dumb when something really goes screwy. The above have no problem with their issues.

We had many that just missed the list, but because these are folks with constant issues, they make the team.