Thursday, December 31, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/25/2009
Story Something: Create personalized children's stories instantly.
"Create personalized children's stories instantly.
Turn any time into story time. It's free.
1. Add the details about your children and family -- what do your kids call Mom? Dad? Grandma?
2. Tell us what kinds of stories your kids like.
3. Have new personalized stories based on your child's age and interests delivered to you automagically."
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/18/2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/17/2009
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/15/2009
Microsoft Rips off Plurk
I am an avid user of Plurk, a microblogging site, it is in my opinion superior to Twitter in terms of the ability to communicate. Plurk is very popular in Asia, and our friends at MicroSoft are out to make a few quick bucks by stealing code from Plurk. Why a company such as M$ feels they can do this is just showing their arrogance. This is a company that will sue anyone at the drop of a hat, but has no problem stealing from others.
Please pass this around. Let others know.
12/15/09 This site is now down.
Please pass this around. Let others know.
12/15/09 This site is now down.
Cable in the Classroom, no longer relevant?
A week or so ago I received an email from a teacher asking about getting cable TV in the classrooms. This is perhaps one of the few school districts that did not run coax cable back in the past 20 years. Not too long after I started here, we ran a survey to see what the cost would be to wire up the buildings, and the costs were higher than we were willing to go. We have the one cable TV drop per building given to us by the local cable company, but that is it. Is this a concept we need to reconsider, or is the idea of cable in the classroom one that is no longer relevant?
I taught in a couple of “Channel One” schools during my carrier, if you do not know, Channel One will give you TVs and wire up your building in exchange for them showing a news cast with advertising to all students every day. Not a bad deal, having a captive audience for advertisers is great for Channel One, but taking time out of the school day for ads is a decision I do not want to make. We actually did some light investigation of Channel One here last year, but could not make it work with our schedule and we would not get a TV in each classroom.
As has been stated in this blog previously, we have a fairly robust Internet connection, and with each classroom having a SmartBoard with projector, we can access network-based content at any time to share with our students. So is having Cable in the classroom necessary any more?
How is cable used in classrooms? Due to the way programs are scheduled on TV, it is tough to arrange your time so that a program that may be relevant will be on when it is needed. It is true that the district can record shows for teachers to show, but we have a service from our BOCES that does this, or we could record from our drops in the building. When I was teaching weather in Earth Science, I sometimes had the weather channel on during class to show stuff, which was useful, but can now be more effectively done with various Internet sites. To tell the truth, the things that the TV was used for more than anything was to watch early round NCAA games, checking news and sports before school, and on occasion something school related. The five men that taught in one school would all meet in one classroom during lunch where we would watch Sports Center or Jerry Springer. Sometimes toward the end of class we would turn on MTV so that the students would have music to do labs or write-ups to (Back when MTV had music).
There are some nice things you can do with cable in the building, such as a student TV broadcast, but this can be done on the network. Really anything that can be done with the cable can now be done better with the Internet. So where does this leave us? We don’t need to rip out cables, how could we watch NCAA games? But I really don’t think we need to think about new installs for Cable in the Classroom.
I taught in a couple of “Channel One” schools during my carrier, if you do not know, Channel One will give you TVs and wire up your building in exchange for them showing a news cast with advertising to all students every day. Not a bad deal, having a captive audience for advertisers is great for Channel One, but taking time out of the school day for ads is a decision I do not want to make. We actually did some light investigation of Channel One here last year, but could not make it work with our schedule and we would not get a TV in each classroom.
As has been stated in this blog previously, we have a fairly robust Internet connection, and with each classroom having a SmartBoard with projector, we can access network-based content at any time to share with our students. So is having Cable in the classroom necessary any more?
How is cable used in classrooms? Due to the way programs are scheduled on TV, it is tough to arrange your time so that a program that may be relevant will be on when it is needed. It is true that the district can record shows for teachers to show, but we have a service from our BOCES that does this, or we could record from our drops in the building. When I was teaching weather in Earth Science, I sometimes had the weather channel on during class to show stuff, which was useful, but can now be more effectively done with various Internet sites. To tell the truth, the things that the TV was used for more than anything was to watch early round NCAA games, checking news and sports before school, and on occasion something school related. The five men that taught in one school would all meet in one classroom during lunch where we would watch Sports Center or Jerry Springer. Sometimes toward the end of class we would turn on MTV so that the students would have music to do labs or write-ups to (Back when MTV had music).
There are some nice things you can do with cable in the building, such as a student TV broadcast, but this can be done on the network. Really anything that can be done with the cable can now be done better with the Internet. So where does this leave us? We don’t need to rip out cables, how could we watch NCAA games? But I really don’t think we need to think about new installs for Cable in the Classroom.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/14/2009
Thinkuknow for parents | Teachers and training area
Here you’ll find the Thinkuknow resources for teachers and all other professionals working with young people. There are films, presentations, games, lesson plans and posters covering a range of issues from grooming by child sex offenders to cyber-bullying. All of these resources encourage young people to have fun with new technology, whilst staying in control of the risks. Importantly, they also teach young people where to go if they have any concerns.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/12/2009
Understanding Science gives users an inside look at the general principles, methods, and motivations that underlie all of science
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/11/2009
This from the Bubbabrain founder - a new Math challenge - go in and play for your state. From the founder:
"I decided to create a national elementary math madness challenge. Students can score points for their state by playing math games.
http://www.bubbabrain.com
1. Click on the math challenge link
2. Select your state
3. Select a game and hit submit
4. The top left card will say "find this" you have to click on the correct match
5. Clear the board and score points
I teach 11th grade and was wondering how to get the message out to the elementary population. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!! Darren McCarty"Teacher Professional Development, E-Learning Curriculum, Classroom Capture! | SimpleK12
Here at SimpleK12, we strive to provide you with the essential training and tools to make your life as an educator easy and simple. Use our navigation at the top to learn more about our simple tools.
Social Media Burnout (part one) | Lifelong Learning 2.0
Sometimes going off the grid is important and necessary! We must be a human being not a human doing!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/10/2009
Teaching & Reaching the Millennial Learner: New Possibilities for the Information Age
Interesting discussions on the touch Interface with Microsoft and some commenters by some Microsoft surface engineers on this remix of some testing some of us did on Surface at NECC 2009.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
One month until FIRST Robotics kick-off.
One month until FIRST Robotics kick-off.
One month.
YIKES!
This will be my second year doing this. Last year I came in late, perhaps a month before kick-off. If you did not read my posts regarding FIRST last year, go back and have a look.
This program is problem based learning (PBL) at its best. At the kick-off all teams are given information about what their robots need to do, and are given a parts kit, they then have six weeks to design, build and test the robot, a short time. I should say this stuff is really not given to the teams, there are many costs involved, this money issue is really another type of PBL for the students to learn.
I have learned about this money raising issue during the "off season" of robotics. For a few years the team has had a major corporate sponsor. The sponsor paid for most expenses. With the way things are now, the funding has been cut down by a fair amount. Due to this we need to raise money, and so is every other organization. The competition for these few dollars has become fierce. Chicken BBQ, Bottle and Can drives, Pumpkin Chunkin, golf tournament, and just about anything else you can think of. Hard for parents, as we buy and help with all of these things, but if we want the kids to be able to do this, we work on it.
The problem of raising money. A real world problem. An ugly problem. Businesses are tapped out at this time of year, the local businesses that try to give to everything in the community are feeling a squeeze. I sent out feelers to several businesses which I work with, and have only one interested, but so it goes.
Anyone out there want to donate money to the team?
Monday, December 7, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/08/2009
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/07/2009
Label educa - Guides de conseils et de soutien au personnel enseignant, aux formatrices et formateurs pour l'intégration des TIC dans l'enseignement
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/05/2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/04/2009
The Activist Toolkit Wiki - Google Calendar
This wiki page is one of the most definitive Google Calendar how-to guides that I've ever see. They did a great job of organizing things! Awesome! I especially like the features on how to print in custom ways at the bottom of this!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/03/2009
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Blogging is Like Football! (What blogging is)
This is an older post but really resonates with me. (Isn't it funny how you can read something from a while back and re-learn all over again some really cool things.) I had to laugh and remember - this was during my first year of blogging and everything is STILL TRUE about blogging. Gotta love this amazing blogging thing that lets us re-invent and re-learn about ourselves over time.
Attention, Librarians who want to laugh or presenters looking for good material, the awful library book bloggers are perfect for you!
Daft Logic – A Quirky But Cool Website You Should Check Out
Some really cool links to neat tools on this website including a Google map distance calculator (geography teachers imagine what you can do with that!)
12-02 ISTE conference keynote update - The crowd speaks! - Dangerously Irrelevant
Current update and overview on ISTE keynoting process as it stands today.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 12/02/2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
