I took an impromptu road trip to Salem MA yesterday to check out the Halloween happenings. We had a great time. I brought along my VirginMobil mifi, so my daughter could complete her homework on the 5 hr round trip drive. I brought my iPad along for the day. We had a great time people watching with everyone in their Halloween best. We spent a good deal of the time walking around discussing the history of Salem, the witch trials,…
I am moving into a new office space next week. It is a pretty nice space and has windows. I have been without a window for 5 years, at least now I’ll know if it is day or night. The office has been freshly painted and when confronted with all the wall space I was wondering how to decorate. What do you hang on the wall? What will inspire me when I feel the job is impossible and what will…
Every July 4th I make my poor children sit through the musical 1776. I do live in Massachusetts after all. There is a line in the movie that has always stayed with me. “I’ve never seen, heard, nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about. Hell yes, I’m for debating anything!” (Spoken by Stephen Hopkins in the movie 1776) As a tech integration specialist part of the support I provide is how to wade through…
(Please excuse a little personal rant) Science is big in my household – my husband and I are both scientists at heart. He still teaches science and I used to before moving into Instructional Tech. We are fascinated by all science; Earth, Space, Bio, Chemistry, Physics it does not really matter. My daughter’s dream since she was 5 has been to go into space and hopefully Mars with NASA. So when NASA scrolls by my twitter or plurk feed I…
In March I wrote about looking at the soon to be released iPads. I thought it was time to give you an update. Our iPads arrived mid May and our mini research project has begun. First the iPads were shared with the Tech Team for about a week. If we were going to support them it would be good if we actually tried them. Next they were delivered to an elementary school for 2 weeks. Today they head to the…
Many schools are now using google apps for education to provide a collaborative space for students and teachers to create and share content. Some districts provide their students with blog and wiki space. I myself have created over 2,000 student identities for our Google Apps domain. Many grad students in education, as you can see from comments of previous posts, are blogging as part of their course requirements. Dave Truss asks the question, Who Owns the Learning? This has opened…
A couple of weeks back I read some great posts* about professional development and learning. They really sum up well those things providers need to remember about learners. It is about the learning and not the tools, after all. I highly recommend taking the time to read them. As technology users ourselves we often are so passionate about what we do that we often don’t understand why others do not catch our passion. We may not realize that some teachers…