My son, age 9, is a gamer. He spends time each day on the computer playing games (Club Penguin, WebKidz and World of War Craft), quite a range. He also is a Nano user and downloads music from iTunes. He lives in a wireless house, all of our computers can move around the house. On day he had to come to school with me. He set up the laptop while I did a few things. I came back and he…
Most of my past experience as a classroom teacher (middle school) has shown me that instant messaging in the classroom was “evil”. I would take my kids to the computer lab to work on a project, do some research, etc… Most of my time was spent watching kids try to hide AIM in the task bar. They would talk to each other while they were waiting for the ancient machines to do anything. I never knew how to respond. When…
My daughter, a middle schooler, has been blissfully unaware of IM in any format. I have not allowed her to participate in IM or things such as My Space – I have been able to avoid this as she is “underage”. She is literal. If the user agreement says you must be 13, she would never think to lie, she will just say I can’t wait till I am 13 and move on to something else. Well time has caught…
Not really tech related but an observation on organizational styles. I work with an incredible team of people. Our team has just put out about 200 new laptops, launched a new student information systems, got 11+ schools and 600 teachers up and running all in a couple of weeks. Not to say there weren’t/are some hiccups, but overall I am very impressed. We are a small team that works well together. We all have different styles and skills, we know…
“Here’s a quick way to tell if you are machine or human focused (as an AV director in Iowa once suggested to me): If someone comes up to you saying his computer doesn’t work, is your first thought: There is a problem in the chair. or There is problem on the desk. If you assumption that the problem is SUD, you better grab one of Norman’s books.” (SUD-Stupid User Dysfunction) Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog – Blue Skunk Blog –…
“I put together a PowerPoint presentation with some (hopefully) thought-provoking ideas. I was hoping by telling some of these “stories” to our faculty, I could get them thinking about – and discussing with each other – the world our students are entering. To get them to really think about what our students are going to need to be successful in the 21st century, and then how that might impact what they do in their classrooms.” The Fischbowl: Did You Know?…
I thougth this summer I would have done more writing on the blog. My head is full of ideas but the time just seems to fly away. I have spent the summer reading blogs and playing with tech tools. Many teachers take the time to catch up on a good book, or take a class, for me it was blogs. I learn so much from different blogs; what are the cool websites (I could also learn that from my daughter),…