Thursday, November 13, 2008

Where did the fall go?

11/08/08

Hmmm... I was so positive I could keep this up during the school year. I don't know what happened. I don't want to taradiddle (make excuses) but I do have over 30 students. They, of course, are wonderful, but I can't seem to get my arms around grading, testing, planning, etc.

Anyway, about knocking down these walls. I have started using my Wiki to have students publish their work. They are very proud. I am, too.

Plus, I have been pretty good about keeping up my wiki introduction page that is told from the classroom's point of view. It is a weekly summary of what happened in our classroom the past week. It is a good place for parents and grandparents to go to find out what's happening.

I'm excited because my technology class is a go for our District. I didn't get notified that it had been approved so thank goodness someone who registered for it contacted me. If she hadn't, I wouldn't have been here on the 15th and the registrants would have been unhappy.

I also got my schedule for teaching for the Bureau of Education and Research. I head to Seattle adn Phoenix in January and Cherry Hills and Newark in February. Hopefully by then I'll have more kid examples of using the different tech. tools.

I do have some exciting news. I was given the opportunity to test drive some of the new alphasmarts - NEO2's. They are pretty sharp. They are wireless. Students can take Accelerated Reader tests on them and do all of the other stuff of which past alphasmarts were capable. Now if I can just get OIT to load the software :-)

More to come.