May 30, 2012

This is going to be a doubly wired edition of wired Wednesday since I didn’t send out any wired related e-mails at all last week.

So here we go, things people are talking about:

1)      Ken shared with me some of the more interesting/applicable 2011 Edublog Award winners:

Two Swift-style online collaboration platforms for teachers (one of which I think people already of heard of): http://www.edmodo.com & http://edu.glogster.com

 Free - Engage the class using any device: http://www.socrative.com

“Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers by engaging their classrooms with a series of educational exercises and games. Our apps are super simple and take seconds to login. Socrative runs on tablets, smartphones, and laptops.”

 One more social engagement site. I chose this site because it requires no account to log in – it’s like a Swift discussion board but visually adjustable: http://www.wallwisher.com

No login required and privacy optional!

Create a ‘wall’ on ‘wallwisher’ for student or group reactions to a topical questions (comments as well as links to images / videos are allowed)

2)      There is a survey out there regarding Smartboard usage during the class. If you haven’t taken it – then please please please do so – it is quick, painless, and will be valuable information going forward. http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22FMGFWLQVV

 

Finally, before I close it out and find out why Outlook auto changed my font color to blue, lately as students have been working on final projects and what not we have had a couple of “learning the hard way incidents” that can only be avoided through educating the students. Many students e-mail papers and what not they are working on to themselves, and then when they go to open it in Internet Explorer, they don’t actually save it to the computer, they just open the file from the e-mail. So no matter how much work is done, and no matter how many times the students click save, they are working on a file that is stored at that moment in the TEMP folder, a folder whose name lends itself to not containing contents for too long.

Long story short, if possible when working in the lab, or on a laptop cart, or in the library, or where-ever, please remind your students to SAVE the file they e-mailed themselves – say to their personal drive – and open it from there. A few students have had a hard lesson to learn, and on the IT side there isn’t much we can do about it.

Thanks and as always if anything is on fire, please e-mail nwsit@northwestschool.org with any issues.

Peter Woodburn

May 15, 2012

Or maybe this is post-emptive if only that was a word since I forgot to send out an e-mail out last week. Oh well!

MIT and Harvard are starting an online learning initiative (entitled ‘edX’) that will be available this fall to students from all over the world at no cost. Their first offering is ‘Circuits and Electronics’ and results in a certificate from MIT – all the content is online with virtual labs, e-textbooks, group discussions and lectures by video.  http://mitx.mit.edu/

Do you know someone who is terrible at typing? Send them here so they can finally get with the 21^st century:  http://www.typingweb.com/

Ken forwarded on a site that has a pretty large supply of digital media for classrooms – on a whole range of subjects: http://www.teachersdomain.org

Ken also sent out a survey regarding classroom use of smartboards and such, please please fill this out if you haven’t yet. Technology is always changing or so the tired old saying goes, and knowing what is being used and what isn’t being used helps us the school in its attempt to keep up with the times. I just realized I don’t even have a web address for the survey – so ping Ken on that to get the link to the survey (ping is nerd talk for open a line of communication).

Last but not least, I am aware that the computers in the faculty lounge haven’t been playing nice the past few days. I am/have been taking a look at them today and hopefully whatever temperamental issue that was there will be better by tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.

I lied, this is the last part - thank you everyone. I haven’t seen a laptop missing a key in quite some time. I appreciate this greatly. Replacing letters on keyboards makes me feel like I am all left handed thumbs. It is tough.

Have a good rest of the sunny week, and as always, if anything is catching on fire please let me know.

Peter Woodburn

May 3, 2012

Once again I’m one day late to this whole Wednesday party, so I’ll forgo my urge to blabber uncontrollably and get right down to the techie, nerdy happenings of the school.

1)      Kathryn Wallace and her 10^th graders tried out a new online tool to help better understand how RNA and DNA recombines, mutates, and do all the fancy stuff the two strands do in life. It is a java based program called Molecular Workbench and also has simulations for physics, chemistry, biology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology.

2)      Starting next week, Marina and her class (with the help of Cecilia) are going to blog with students from a school in Uruguay using the quite hip and quite popular Tumblr platform. We’ll link to it when it gets going (and by we I mean me).

3)      The PNAIS Techschare Conference is happening this summer on July 2^nd and July 3^rd. If you are interested in going, the early bird registration ends on May 14^th and the price skyrockets $45. Head to their website for more information.

4)      Apparently Blended Learning is the hot new topic out there – here is a good introduction for those needing it.

 

Thanks and that is all I/what Ken provided to me have for now.

 

-Peter