The Classroom

It’s a simple concept, a no brainer. But it’s a simple premise that Bruce Dixon started his presentation. And he’s completely right. We can use technology, but it’s just the tool, not the subject. It’s like saying your going to teach the pencil. When we loose that focus our students are in danger of failure. We can’t risk that. The 1:1 project is not about teaching our students how to use computers in their classes, but to help students become more adaptive learners, and to help techers reach students more effectively then we could have before. That’s when tools do, allow us to do our jobs more effectively… And computers are just a tool.

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 I’ve been busy to say the least.  And I’m VERY sorry I haven’t posted more… I’m looking at 3 partially written posts that I started, but never got back to – they seem pretty out of date now – but I just might dust them off the spruce them up later.  But for now here’s a journal entry I wrote for my 1:1 project community site, but thought I’d share it here…. after all I went through all the work to write it – and I think it raises some good points….

Where to begin… This has been a roller coaster month for me – just so many things to do, papers to fill out, and technologies to master. But I can proudly say that today my students had no problems logging onto the system and using their laptops. And they loved it. They have bought into the idea whole heartedly. These are “their” laptops. They’ve taken ownership, and are extremely pumped to start using these systems in class. Read the rest of this entry »

A good friend of mine, Randy Lyseng, has been telling people of the tremendous power and educational value that can be gained from social bookmarking in the classroom. His personal favourite is Diigo.

My preference is a social bookmarking tool called http://diigo.com. With diigo, you can highlight, add stick notes and make your comments private or public. (Randy Lyseng, Lyseng Tech: Social Bookmarking, November 2006)

After listening to Randy praise Diigo at every opportunity, I finally started playing with the site (and corresponding program, more on that in a bit) this summer (I know Randy – I’m slow to catch on…) Read the rest of this entry »

As I tell people about this new 1 to 1 project I’m a part of I usually get one of two responses, either “That’s cool!” or “Don’t kids today already spend enough time on computers already? When are they learn the real way of doing things?” Its these occasions when I’m reminded of a video that Danny Mass recommended a few posts back:

Download Video: Posted by jsdt4 at TeacherTube.com.

Read the rest of this entry »