The Classroom

I was just surfing the net, avoiding my real work when I came upon the strangest video… a beat boxing flautist.

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While talking to my student teacher about how to increase student by-in I made reference to the movie Dangerous Minds.  I’ve always loved how this movie is based on a true story, and how the original book is entitled “My Posse Don’t Do Homework”.  I’ve always thought of my class in that manner… My posse, my crew, my team.  Well having never actually READ the book, I decided to log on to my friendly internet book store and order it.  Sadly its no longer in print, but Louanne Johnson (the author) has written more books, her most recent being “Teaching Outside the box: how to grab your students by the brains”. Read the rest of this entry »

During spring break I took a day just to mess around on my computer.  Yes I had a million other jobs that needed to be done, but I really haven’t had anytime just to do techie things, and I was starting to feel out of the loop.  The stuff I found made my imagination just soar!

Now it’s no secret that I’m a huge supporter of the WordPress blogging platform.  I don’t usually “preach the joys of Worpress” during my inservices because I personally believe that everyone should always have a chance to make up their own minds, it is my software of choice.  WordPress comes in many different flavors from the hosted WordPress.com, to the host your own WordPress, or even the multi user WordPress Mu.  It is this last option that currently has my attention – and has exciting possibilities for the classroom. Read the rest of this entry »

Well folks, I upgraded the “backend” of my blog to the latest and greatest WordPress release and was very happy with the result. I love the new administration panel, and just the layout of the system in general. But sadly the new look and feel could only be seen by me, leaving everyone else out in the cold. So I upgraded my theme from “Freshy 1.0″ to “Freshy 2″! What does that mean for you??? Just a slicker looking interface, and cool new drop down menus on the nav bar to help you find what you’re looking for faster. I’ve also revived the use of Gravatar (though before it was MyBlogLog) Avatars on the comments posts. If you go to Gravatar and sign up your image will appear beside your post… if not the Classroom’s apple icon will take your place.

Last, but not least I’ve added a mobile theme that should allow you to view The Classroom on your PDA or Cellphone, I haven’t had a chance to test this yet, so please let me know if you run into any problems. In the end, all the upgrade are mainly cosmetic – but I think they’ll add a little polish to the blog.

Enjoy!
-Mr. G