Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 8th, 2009 1 Comment »
Bring up cell phones in a classroom, and guaranteed everyone joins in the discussion. Most of our districts have restrictive policies which frankly aren’t working very well. Students have become experts in texting while the phones are in their pockets or behind books. There is a growing belief that instead of trying to restrict them [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 21st, 2009 1 Comment »
Many school districts do not allow their students to have email addresses for school use. This can be frustrating because there are many opportunities for teachers and students to communicate and share files. One alternative to individual email addresses is using Edmodo.
“Edmodo is a private microblogging platform that teachers and students can use to send [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 15th, 2009 1 Comment »
As I have stated in some of my older posts, wikis are great tools to use for collaborating, compiling research, and distributing information. There are various free wiki sites that you can use for your personal use or classroom. Here are some further resources with ideas on how to teach and use wikis:
Wiki Walk Through [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 7th, 2009 No Comments »
I use Google Reader to bring in all of my RSS feeds which consist of different blogs, newspapers, and other resources. This is one tool that I do use daily and it sure beats having to go out rechecking websites for updates. At Will Richardson’s workshop that I attended at METC, Will described how to [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
One thing that METC accomplished was to reinforce over and over that we have to change our way of teaching and reaching our present day students. Meg Ormiston presented the keynote entitled Culture Clash! Wired Kids in Text Driven Classrooms. The remark that she stressed many times is that we are boring our kids and [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 27th, 2009 3 Comments »
For the past 2 days, I have been at the METC tech conference in St. Louis. The workshops so far have been very beneficial! There has been much discussion on how our students need to become proficient with the social networking tools if they are going to become lifelong learners. It is going to be [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 22nd, 2009 3 Comments »
The article “Use of blogs in online college classes“, found in Encylcopedia of Educational Technology, lists a number of ways that blogs could be used within a college course. Don’t let the title of “online college classes” keep you from checking it out though if you are a lower level teacher because most of these [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 17th, 2009 4 Comments »
Have you ever clicked on a web link or tried to return to a page that you had bookmarked and it is no longer there? That’s especially frustrating if it contains an article or information that you need or want to revisit. When that happens, you might want to visit the Wayback Machine and see [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 14th, 2009 2 Comments »
If you are wanting to integrate more technology into your classroom but aren’t sure where to begin, you might want to check out the blog Technology Integration Made Simple. The author, Jennifer Gingerich, is an Educational Technology Consultant and writes on various simple ways to begin using more technology in your lessons. Most of her [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 16th, 2008 3 Comments »
One of the most helpful weekly newsletters that I receive through my email is from TeachersFirst. TeachersFirst is a large collection of lessons and ideas to use in the classroom along with other resources to support teachers. One of their services is to search out and review resources throughout the web that can be used [...]
