Farewell to a Friend

Yesterday, I briefly attended a reception honoring the director of our service center, Dr. Rita Cook. Rita leaves us to become a school superintendent in Kentucky, moving her closer to family. I got to thinking about how quickly time passes, and how in the course of our careers in education we move in and out of other folks’ lives, sometimes unaware of the impact they have had on us and vice versa.
Not so with Rita. I have never forgotten the words she spoke to me the day she invited me to come and work here. No other time in the course of my life has an employer said anything that had such an impact on my professional life. I hope I have begun to live up to her expectations in the six years we’ve worked together. And true to her way of working with people, she was the one who encouraged me again when the tears welled up as I said goodbye. Thanks Rita. The school district that enticed you away from us has no idea (yet!) how lucky they are to have you.
☺

More Ways to Show What You Know!

Here are two great new sites for you to explore! Capzles lets you upload pictures and video to create a great multimedia presentation - a Capzle in Time! Click here: Capzles to explore.

The next one is Museum Box. This one takes a bit more of a learning curve, and you have to join up and wait to be accepted. Teachers can create logins for their students, and be notified when students submit a project. Quite nice and will hold huge variety of content - photos, sound files, video clips, text files, links. this would make a wonderful social studies or literacy project. I'm working on one right now! Click here: Museum Box

Wireless Signal Boosting - or How to enjoy working in your backyard, too!

My network configuration at my country home is wild, or wierd, depending on how you look at it. I run a LAN between three buildings, one of them with 20-inch deep rock walls. Wireless transmission across the area can be, at the least, challenging.
Believe it or not, I've solved the problem with cardboard, scissors, aluminum foil and a glue stick. No kidding. The final result looks like this:



Now, when I want to use the laptop in the office, in the living room, out in the backyard with the dog for company, no problem. What to know how to 'do it yourself'? Take a look at this video:

Podstock!

On Friday morning, bright and very early, I'll be heading out to Wichita to be one of the guest presenters at the first annual Podstock Conference. I can hardly wait! It is such fun to share with educators about the power of giving students and teachers voice through podcasting.
My presentation Friday afternoon is called, "Yakity-Yak, DO TALK BACK!" I have lists of ideas for topics across all curricular areas, including vocational classes and the arts, lots of web resources, and classroom examples to share.
So many thanks go to Kevin Honeycutt for including me in this event!
Here's a podcast mashup of clips from students' and teachers' podcasts in my podcast library, and a short video about "Why I Podcast!"

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Why I Podcast

The 21st Century Learning Environment

What characteristics should a 21st Century classroom hold for our students? Take a look at these videos, courtesy of istevision, the ISTE digital storytelling site:







What about YOUR classroom? Have you tried taking any steps to move your classroom forward into this type of learning environment? I hope so! Your students depend on you to care about their futures!

Time for some FUN!

Courtesy of one of my favorite bloggers, the Grumpy Old Teacher, I've been sent to a new 'fun with photos' site. It's called PhotoFunia, and here's an example of what you can do with your picture:



Give yourself a short break and give it a try! Kids will love it, hands down. Here's where to find it: PhotoFunia

Jogging the Web

Here is a simple and simply great web tool to use in your classroom. It's called "Jog the Web" and is found at http://www.jogtheweb.com. Creating a 'Jog' puts you in control of your sources for a class. Suppose you are teaching 5th grade social studies, and you want your students to do some research on the great explorers. You only have a 40 minute class period to complete this project, so sending your students on a great Google search is just not possible.
Your answer? Create a webquest using this great resource! You can include as many - or as few - links as you wish, put your discussion questions in the Discussion tab in the left bar. This works similarly to the older-style tracks we've used in other web-based programs, but it's easier! Students easily figure out the navigation - the arrows in the upper left corner of the left bar.
In addition, you can download the toolbar button to your Firefox browser (you do use Firefox, don't you? I guess that's a topic for another day!) By using the Jog the Web button, I can create and add to 'Jogs' on the fly. Makes it so easy to organize a class or a presentation or a webquest!
Try it - you'll like it! You can search by author on the site - my 'Jogs' are created by "lloutback", my fam nickname.
Here's one of my 'Jogs' for you to try! Click here: MACE 2009

Scotty - Beam Me Up!

For years, I've told my students and teachers that I intend to live long enough to see the 'Star Trek' computer and holideck a reality in our teaching environments. Things have been changing so fast, that day is not far off. Take a look at this TED Tech Talk posted last month:



WOW! I can't wait!

How do you send big files?

Ever been in the situation where you want to send a file to another teacher, and the file exceeds the maximum size allowed by your e-mail server? Happens to me all the time!

Here's a great solution: You Send It. This is a web service that allows you to send files up to 100 MB in size for free. Paid services for larger file transfers are available. I used it today to upload three large FlipChart files to my Promethean trainer, and it was easy. Give it a go!

And thanks to Katheryn at Promethean for the tip!

Treasures from PBS Teachers

Did you know that among its treasures, PBS Teachers has a great resource called Activity Packs. According to their site, "An Activity Pack is a set of educational resources focused on a theme and packaged in a widget-format that you can embed in your own class or social media web page. Each pack includes links to PBS web sites and a set of activities by grade level."
Here's an example in the right column of my page - I just clicked on the Pack and followed the instructions; it posted itself right to my blog! I love this idea! Click on Activity Packs and see what's available for you to use with your students.