Technology through Time

Many of you are wrapping up your ITLP’s and thinking about what’s next. In fact, many of you have thought about grants and other possibilities for funding. So I thought this week’s blog post would be about how to plan for technology needs and how to get funding.My best experience as a technology planner has been to pull together a group of teachers and put together a needs assessment. We surveyed the school, teachers staff and students and asked them what technology they used this year that was good, what technology was not so good and why. We also asked them what they needed to be more successful at their jobs. Now this may seem like a silly thing to ask since it does not have anything to do with technology, but remember we want technology to be a seamless part of our teaching and learning. This can only happen if we see the technology as a tool to reach our goal. Therefore, knowing what our goals are first will help us to identify the best fitting technology. There ar...

Catching up on my Ted Talks, led me to this excellent Ted Talks worth watching and thinking about in terms of being an Ed Tech teacher: Kathyrn Schulz: On Being Wrong I remember having a math teacher who would express to me, over and over, that it is ok to come up with a different way to do a math problem to get to the same answer. This is the beauty of learning and education. Learning different perspectives or ways of learning is what makes us human. Kathryn Shulz, states “The miracle of our mind is seeing the world as it isn’t.” In educational technology, we should open our minds to the concept that “maybe I am wrong” as we approach teaching our students with technology. Allowing students to be as equal willing learners when using technology creates a classroom of cohesion, or a learning community. One in which we can endeavor to share ideas and understanding despite cultural or societal differences. So why not ask our selves, what wrong perspective do we have about our...

This lesson will walk you through on editing a page for the site you set-up using Google Sites. Google Sites makes it very easy to edit a page, place media on a page and add some Google Gadgets. To begin with you will want to start by heading over to your site. You can access your site by logging into your gmail account and clicking on sites in the navigation menu. Next you will need to create a new page. Click on create new page in the right upper corner. Select the Layout button to add containers to your content area. This will help to break your content into 1-3 columns to keep the content or Google Gadgets separate. Add text to your content containers. Do not forget that Google allows you to copy and paste text from word or text documents. You can edit format by changing font size, color, alignment or adding a link. To make titles or heading titles use format and use those heading tags instead of enlarging and bolding font. Once you have add...

suttonhoo.blogspot.com This came from a request from the cohort on how to add an mp3 file and player to your Google Sites so you can play podcasts or other audio files on your Google Sites page. ( Note an alternative to this method is to use Google Blogger to post podcasts in a post. ) To begin with these steps are slightly more advanced then what we have been doing, but use the videos to help you. Go to your Google Site. Go to Manage Site and choose attachments on the left side navigation menu. Select the upload button at the bottom left, and upload your audio file to your site. Copy the address (Right click windows, control click mac) of the link that says Download for the Audio file you just uploaded Go to your page where you want to add the audio file and edit the page. Click on the html in the edit menu for the container where you want to put the mp3 player and audio file link. Paste in the link from the audio file and delete the junk on the end, until the last par...

Understanding copyright is a critical basic skill every teacher should be aware of, especially when using the Internet or working with students to publish their work on the Internet. There are a wealth of resources on the Internet to understand more about copyright and how to teach the issues to your students, these include: Standford's Copyright and Fair Use Sit e Tammy Morris also shares a wealth of resources and tools for better understanding Copyright, as well as helping your students to understand copyright. (Click on Copyright) Here are the basics: Use google's Advanced Search to locate Copyright Free images, videos, and documents Use Creative common s to located audio, text, and video under a variety of licenses. Also publish your own work with a license. If you need to use another persons work, contact them to see if it is ok if you are at all unsure. Always cite where a resource came from if it was not your own original work. Wesley Fryer shares a great S...

Did you know? This comes from State School Healthy Policy ( State of Alaska Policy on Bullying and Harassment: Last Updated: 1/5/2011 Bullying/Harassment : Statute  14.33.200 (2006) requires the Department of Education to provide a model policy for harassment, intimidation and bullying to school districts.  Based on this, districts are required to adopt a policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation and bullying of any student and share the policy with parents or guardians, students, volunteers and school employees.  Statute  14.33.210 (2006) requires each school district to report all incidences involving harassment, intimidation or bullying to the Department of Education, which will then report it to the state legislature.  Statute  14.33.220 states that a school employee, student or volunteer may not engage in reprisal, retaliation, or false accusation against a victim or a witness.  It also encourages reporting of any harassment...

Perform a basic search, review the results and identify validity and safety of a site. ISTE NETS Standards (Model Digital-Age Work and Learning): model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning. Once you have begun troubleshooting, it is time to learn how to perform basic searches on the Internet. You will quickly find that the Internet is a large repository of information, with often several different ways to solve 1 issue or problem. So knowing how to sort through the wealth of information is crucial from a teachers perspective, especially since it can be a time saving skill when done properly. The process looks something like this: What do you want to learn about or know how to do? Choose key words or phrases from above. These are your search words: Place these in the search engine such as, http://www.google.com Perform the Search Use parameters to narro...