The Future of a School

The Future of a School

My school is in the process of building a new Media Center. We have held and continue to hold meeting with the architects, planners, consultants, etc to try and create a building for the 21st century. I have had some great conversations with my Deputy Superintendent over the future of technology. Yesterday she sent an e-mail with the following question. […]

Microwave Popcorn

Microwave Popcorn

Have you ever had one of those moments where a thought pops into your head that just makes you laugh? I had one last night over microwave popcorn. As I stood in front of the microwave waiting for the popcorn to finish I started thinking about kids today growing up with technology and how itÂ’s difficult for older generations to […]

Yahoo to put copyrighted books on the Internet

Yahoo to put copyrighted books on the Internet

In a recent article from eschool news talks about YahooÂ’s approach to putting copyrighted books online, while at the same time appeasing publishers. Something Google hasnÂ’t been able to do. My feeling is we are doing something new here,” Mandelbrot said. “We are building a collaborative effort that will make a great deal of copyrighted material available in a way […]

Techie Teachers

Techie Teachers

I have been really excited the past couple of days as more and more teachers here about the Blogs we have started here at the school and the upstart of our Moodle site. I have teachers approaching me asking what it is, how they do that, etc. What a great feeling knowing there are teachers at your school who are […]

A Little R&R

A Little R&R

Just got back from a relaxing weekend on the Island of Hainan. Took some time to catch up on some reading that IÂ’ve been meaning to do. Ian Jukes “Education at the Crossroads” “Moving the Educational Debate” “Beyond Technology to the New Literacy/Shifting Gears Workshop” Marc Prensky “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” “Do They Really Think Differently” Carr, David, K. (1996) […]

Blog Reflection

Blog Reflection

My 5th graders have been blogging for about 2 weeks now. As much as I understand and read about this generation of digital kids, they still amaze me. I use the Blogmeister software which has been a great and easy way to manage my student blog entries. Today I came into school to find 34 blog articles waiting for review. […]

Online and ready to learn

Online and ready to learn

Last week I put the final touches on our new moodle site for my school as well as set up a blog sub domain to house the hopefully expanding blog sites. Our first blog is a literacy blog where teachers will post and comment with a literacy specialist in Beijing. I am excited to have these sites set up and […]

Back to the Future

Back to the Future

An article on September 22 from techlearning.com looks back at predictions made about technology and education. ItÂ’s amazing how close and how far off some of the perditions were. An interesting article to read and ponder.

When to start typing

When to start typing

A recent article at missoulian.com discusses at what age should schools start teaching typing. Some schools wait until as late as 5th or 6th grade to teach typing, while other schools start at grade 2. “The quandary is: Are we creating a world of hunt-and-peck keyboard users by waiting too long to give formal typing instruction? Or might keyboarding lessons […]

A Tech Nudge

A Tech Nudge

For the 5th Wednesday in a row now I have sent out what I call Wacky WednesdayÂ’s Websites (WWW). This is basically an e-mail to teachers explaining some sort of tech tip and a couple web sites I feel might be interesting to them. I started by only sending the WWW to the grade level teachers I taught, word got […]