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.

Summer's Coming!

And it's not too early to plan your summer learning experiences! We have a great slate of workshops planned - both face-to-face and online or combinations of the two venues - and I'm excited about the possibilities.
My favorite class to teach this summer is Geocaching. You should learn about GPS, Google Earth and Google Maps, and all the great ways you can uses these technologies for learning for kids of all ages - from three to 90+! I'm not kidding! Kids of all ages love to learn using GPS - you will, too!
Dates for these classes are May 28-29 or July 30-31. An extra day of online work is also available, and completion of the online unit in conjunction with the two days of practical experience will land you two hours of college credit. What better way to learn some cool technologies and get credit for it? Enroll in the class today! Listen to the CourseCast for more information:

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Spring Break

We're spending spring break in a southern state, visiting grandchildren. We're experiencing beautiful weather, and all of the children are out and about, riding scooters and skateboards, enjoying the free time.
This one, however, chose to take a break, sit on the sidewalk and put in some more screen time playing a game. At least he's outside? Maybe. The teenagers in the neighborhood are spending more time texting than talking, although they too are outside much of the time.
Why do I comment? not sure; just another revelation of the changing generations.

Celebrate the MACE Conference

I always enjoy the MACE Conference. Sponsored by one of the hardest-working volunteer organizations that I know, the Mid-America Computers in Education group always sponsors a great get-together, with teachers and tech coordinators, curriculum specialists and instructors, from across the state attending and presenting.
This year's featured speaker, Hall Davidson from Discovery Education, was so fired-up that we came home trying all kinds of new things. He was encouraging and challenging, reminding me again that the kids are what it's all about.
I've tried out three new things already this weekend: Plurking (which distracts me to no end so I'm not so sure I should be leaving it on at the office all the time), drop.io - which allows on-the-fly file sharing and can be password-protected, and xtra-normal - a text-to-movie web2.0 app. What fun!