SEEDlings

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In keeping with the spirit of SEED TLLs we are organizing a monthly dinner meeting which will take place at various host schools. The purpose of our meetings will be to:

• Share online technology treasures, or “Geek of the Week”
• Provide support for technology integrators and leaders
• Discuss educational technology needs, resources, and best practices.
• Eat
• Have a good time

Our meeting will take place at Rowe School in Yarmouth, Maine. We will meet on Thursday January 18th from 5PM to 7PM. If you would like to order takeout from Clayton’s Cafe e-mail Ryan Palmer at rpalmer@sad61.k12.me.us by noon on the 18th. A link to the menu can be found HERE . If you don’t wish to order takeout, feel free to brown bag it or get takeout from somewhere else before you arrive.

If you have any questions about the meeting, group, or location, email Alice Barr or Ryan Palmer.

A few notes from the session:

We are learning about the flattening world and how information is changing.

Model blogging
Use TEXT EDIT or NOTEPAD to write your post. In Text Edit you can select a passage, write click and have it read back to you.
Blogging: Taking Technology out of the picture

Wiki Conference model: What are the essential questions you want to know about a wiki? Everyone responds on a wiki to cull the questions. Then the questions become the conference session.

Wikipedia entries: Back up with another source
Part 1 Learn from Wikipedia about this topic
Part 2 find another source that supports the article
I want to know how bookmarks AUTO update to a web page

Read The Long Tail Where Wikipedia fits in to our culture.
Technorati indexes the blogoshpere.

CreativeCommons

Blog Tag Generator

by Will Richardson

What happens to time-worn concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can now go online and learn anything, anywhere, anytime?

Read the article

I understand the read/write web. I knew it was cool. I’ve envisioned reaching out and having authors write back to the kids.

Today, my students collected email addresses of history professors and asked their opinions on the issues where studying.

Thirty seconds before the final bell our blog received it’s first reply. It’s even cooler when it’s your stuff.

I’ve been assigned my very first full-fledge Computer Apps class and I’m finding life without iTunes (not included on district image) sad.

How have people from the MLTI project worked around this issue?

Thanks!

- Mike

Hi SEEDlings and welcome back to school.

One of my goals this year is to learn more about GIS so I can help teachers develop units with it. I see GIS as a wonderful tool with the potential for supporting integrated units incorporating social studies, math, science, language arts, etc.

The new MLTI image includes MyWorld, Pasco’s GIS software (donated by Pasco) but I haven’t had time to play with it yet. I’ve heard of some great projects students have done analyzing election results or answering questions such as “Where should a nuclear waste facility be built?” Have any of you developed GIS projects with teachers and students?

~ Barbara

Five days back in the classroom.

Five things I’d forgotten.

1. Eating lunch in gulps isn’t much fun.
2. Not being able to go the restroom on demand isn’t much fun either.
3. Discussing with a teenager with or not a t-shirt is appropriate for school is more fun than I’d like to admit.
4. How hard it is to find time to check your email during the day.
5. What it’s like to have people think your first name is Mr.

Five things that were as I remembered them.

1. Every teacher wants to be in their room before school starts, but they aren’t.
2. Custodians get a big ovation within the first eight minutes.
3. The kitchen staff have to be found and given another nice round of applause.
4. There are more things to do than their is prep time to do them.
5. No day goes by faster or feels better than a day of teaching.

Thought I’d chime in with some things. I am curious to know if anyone out there has used “Writely”. www.writely.com. It has reopened since it has been acquired by Google. I think some of the tools there could be used as a whole organizational, conferencing and teaching peice for ELA. Any other people out there using it or anyone who does extensive writing use something to organize those efforts in the classroom?

Thanks,

Jeff Bailey

I recently was given a copy of Omnidazzle to play with and I’m so impressed.

I’ve seen other apps that do similiar things, but this one does some fun things.

You can use it to zoom portions of the screen (just like option, apple and +/-), you can turn you mouse into a spotlight (just like mousepose), you can use it to draw (just like John Madden or Jerry Remy), and if you use several screens or a big screen it’s very handy to find your mouse.

Check out the demo version (which runs for an hour at a time).