InfoTeacher

Check out Spreeder — “free online speed reading application.”

I’m not sure what it is, but there must be a way to use it (probably not with your Dylexia students; but then again maybe because they see only 1 word rather than lines and lines of words . . . . who knows?). Anyway, what a cool, creative site.  (Maybe in a staff training?).

I created a little flier to promote my role as a teacher.  Download and use it if you’re a technology teacher.

I’m seriously considering migrating this whole blog over to Google Blogger with an @Blotgspot address. I’ve tried embedding media in a way that was EASY over there, and just can’t seem to get it. I opened this when my district had all Blogger sites blocked — not true anymore. I use Google docs, Google calendar, Google Reader, Picasa by Google (why doesn’t that one follow the same naming pattern [i.e Google Picasa]) . . .

Why am I still here struggling with this inferior host?

Sure I would lose comments, but it’s not like I have a whole lot of commentators anyway.

Bloomberg News is reporting that Google is considering writing an Operating System to compete with Microsoft Windows.  Link here.  Very interesting.  It looks like they will start with an OS for low cost laptops — and see where the market takes them.

I, for one, think competition is always good. Competition makes public education better, too — but I realize that opens about 144 can of worms for many of my colleagues.

I upgraded to IE8 (actually, the upgrade is nested into the Windows Update, so if you click “Next” too quickly without paying attention, you upgrade to it without realizing it).  IE8 has a couple of new features — nothing that I would write home about; a private browsing feature, but if you really want privacy there’s been portable Firefox around for years). Looks and feels like IE7 (which I thought was a big improvement over 6).  I like IE8, and like to keep up with the security features they bring with updates.  Again, 7 was a giant leap forward, but 8 seems to be mostly cosmetic and hidden updates.

However (and there’s always a however in life), when I upgraded to IE8, I can’t get to this blog. I seem to be able to surf everywhere else fine – except here at Edublogs. My Blogspot blog is fine as well as all other (so far) secure pages. But when I come to this page, it freezes every time. Happened on both my desktop at home and my laptop. I was actually going to only upgrade on one computer and see, but I clicked “Next” too quickly on Windows Update, and both computers got IE8. I didn’t mind, until I went to write a post about finishing school. Both computers, newly upgraded to IE8 freeze. One runs Vista and one is XP — so it’s not the OS.  Well, …..

I’m writing this post in Firefox.  I’ve been wanting to jump on board and see about Firefox anyway, so this gave me the opportunity to try. I’ll be surfing with both browsers for a while and see what the differences are.  Want to see which one I like.  But, unless the BFG (per Roald Dahl’s book the BFG, I refer to Microsoft as the BFG) creates a patch for IE8, I’ll have to use Firefox for this blog.

I’ll get back to my post first semester of Leadership training post by end of day today.  Got a couple of other post ideas I’ve had to skip, too because I haven’t been able to get in for a few days.

Kathryn Greenhill from librariansmatter.com – a librarian from Australia posts this on Slide Share.  Really having trouble with the embed, so here is the link.  (I’m not that happy with WordPress’ format – chose it and Edublogs so my district wouldn’t block it; gotta say – Blogger is MUCH easier!!)

In my district, even those of us who TALK quite a bit about these technologies are not DOING them enough. Quite a few more as asking “why bother?” – this show says a lot about why we should bother, though it only touches the broad range of what’s new – no details. In the end, a push to at least try one. (I especially like slide 137 — “No offense, future man, but is everyone in your time retarded?”). Very creative, broad encompassing and interesting.
 

Our school board is considering closing schools. This is not unusual in our current climate. School boards all over the country are looking at numbers, tax bases, economic woes, and they are making hard choices. I talked to a friend of mine who teaches in Phoenix, and word is that they are looking at a large (shockingly large! It’s hard to believe the numbers he quoted me) reduction of their professional and paraprofessional staff.

The truth is, our board has put off making this decision for half a decade. We are an urban district (In a formerly large town which was, prior to that, a medium-sized town. It’s a town that still has a hard time thinking of itself as an urban). But the hard truth is white flight is occuring; families that move in who can afford it are moving to the more suburban school districts that surround our city. Even though we have one pocket of semi-suburban neighborhoods still within our district’s boundaries where we’ve build schools in the past two years to relieve overcrowding, most of the rest of the district is losing students. We have upwards of 4,000 fewer students now than we did a decade ago. We have a few half-empty schools and quite a few schools that are not half-empty, but are getting there quickly. Still, prior boards have avoided making the hard choices.  Here is an editorial from our local paper which speaks in favor of making these hard choices.  We’ve had public meetings and asked for information from groups of stakeholders, employee groups, parents, staff. They have enough information — really they have a ton of information. Here is another article about the information they have.  They started with some basic presuppositions, and a collection of data about school usage and programs in the various schools. All schools (not just those on the list) were asked to evaluate and list their own strengths and areas to improve. Then a consultant was brought in, and all of this information was tabulated in a plan that they took to employee groups, employee leaders, and to the public. They actually asked and solicited information, and they listened. The plan was changed and each change was posted (currently the district has Draft 18 on their site). At each public meeting they asked focus groups to record and give input about various options. Still, we have people crying that this decision is being made too fast.

The school board is caught between doing doing what is fiscally responsible and largely unpopular, and putting off the decision or doing some small measure that pretends to solve the problem.  It’s a tough position. I don’t envy the tough spot in which they sit. The problem with a true democracy is that people won’t make the tough decisions. Self interest gets in the way. That’s why our founding fathers made this country a democratically elected republic. That’s essentially what a school board is. A democratically elected republic presumes that those elected to the board will have the guts to make the hard and even unpopular choices.

I think we have a good board. Current information suggests that all but one member recognize the difficulty, and are willing do the tough but necessary job. I hope they make the hard choices. If they don’t make these choices, we will be talking about a fiscal crisis in a year or two. Decisions made in a crisis are not likely to be decisions that work to improve student achievement.

I have created a rubric that can be used for Podcasts of Digital Stories.  I think I am going to jump in head first with a class next week turning their stories into Podcasts. They already have the stories finished, and have created their own pictures, so some of what is in the rubric is a little obsolete. Hopefully they will still catch on as their stories are evaluated. This rubric will help them as they are evaluated on the technology/media side of things. Rubric was created with Rubistar Rubric Maker (they are great, and already have suggestions for categories for podcasts; this rubric was created the simple way — just using the suggested content of categores chosen from the pull down list).

I was going to upload an Excel Spreadsheet but can’t see how to attache a file (except video, audo, image etc), and I can’t even see how to paste a table in here (still figuring out Word Press after using Google Blogger for 2 years).  Email me if you would like to see it until I figure our how WordPress uploads Excel.

Tags: 21st Century Learning

Obviously I haven’t posted — been trying software tricks at night from seminars I’ve been in each day. Fought with Windows Moviemaker last night for a long while wishing it worked like garageband. Went to another eminar today and saw more tricks from garageband — I’m amazed and really wishing Windows had something remotely similar. I’m about to sit through a Fundamentals of Moviemaker seminar — a change from my original plan — just because I finally figured it can’t be that bad. I must be the one who is unable to teach myself. I know Moviemaker doesn’t do nearly what the Mac does (whether it be garageband or imovie or what . . . ), but it must be a little better than what I’ve taught myself. So, I’m going to sit through this seminar and try to learn what they teach. The instructor was here when I came in and asked me why I attended. I mentioned wanting to get kids podcasting and wished we had something like garageband. He didn’t say (as I’d hoped), “you can do more with Moviemaker than you realize.”  What he said was, “I can tell you about a product called JOURNALIST IN A BOX that lets a Windows guy do just about the same thing as the Mac guys. I’m not to encouraged. I was hoping with Moviemaker we could get remotely close — since I don’t want to have to buy more software (with budget constraints, plus all of the district bells and whistles needed to get software for the school) but use what we already have!

I’ll be blogging the TIE conference this week to post my thoughts and network with other library/information teacher bloggers. Today is the CASL preconference to TIE. Sitting listening to introductions right now, and looking forward to learning.