Technology Times

This week’s Feel Good Friday post is in honor of Mother’s Day. I realize, however, that most of these apply to BOTH parents (except for #21, at least)!

You know you are a parent when…

1. You’ve signed a check with a crayon.
2. Your feet stick to the kitchen floor, and you don’t care.
3. You’ve accidentally brushed your teeth with diaper rash ointment.
4. You’ve caught vomit in your hand, and haven’t been grossed out by it.
5. You can recite Goodnight Moon by heart.
6. You consider the person who invented Sippy Cups a genius.
7. You see a mom from your child’s playgroup at the mall and know her son’s name but not hers.
8. You consider it a major triumph if you manage to shower by noon.
9. You own the entire Baby Einstein DVD collection.
10. You find yourself humming the Dora the Explorer theme song in the shower.
11. You’ve considered trading your whole life savings for just one good night of sleep.
12. You’ve spent an entire week wearing sweats.
13. You really hope that ketchup is a vegetable since it’s the only one your kids will eat.
14. Your child finds an old french fry under the seat, eats it, and it doesn’t gross you out.
15. You get to work only to realize your shirt has spit up stains on the shoulders.
16. You’ve sniffed your child’s bottom in public to determine if he/she needs a diaper change.
17. You tell everyone in your business meeting that it’s time to take a “potty break”.
18. You’ve discussed your child’s bodily functions over dinner.
19. You’ve ever uttered the statement, “Because I said so, that’s why!”
20. You’ve used spit to “wash” your child’s face.
21. You only have time to shave one leg at a time (if at all).
22. The only place you can go for “alone time” is the bathroom, and even that gets interrupted.

It’s that time of year — SOLs, AP tests, and then final exams. Testing can be a VERY stressful time for students, parents, and staff. So, I thought the best website to share this week would be one that was all about taking a break and having some fun. When it feels like testing will never end (I think I’m already there, and SOLs have only been going on for a few hours….), do yourself a favor and take a break. Here is a fun site where you can design your own kaleidescope. It’s very cool!

I know that we are all very busy, but it’s important to take mental breaks once-in-a-while.

I know all of you are just as despondent as I am to know that the end of the year is rapidly approaching and that we are faced with seemingly endless summer weeks without our daily dose of classroom wondrousness.

With that in mind, it’s highly advisable to back up your data on a regular basis. At this point in the year, you probably have gigabytes of worksheets, notes, tests, etc., that you have worked long and hard on. If you haven’t been doing it on a regular basis already, now is the time to back everything up to a thumb drive! There are many different ways you can backup your data, but here’s one way for you:

1. Go to Start/My Document (Note: if you have your files stored somewhere else on your C Drive other your My Documents folder, then use these steps to copy those, too)
2. In the My Documents window, highlight all your documents and folders.
3. On the left pane, click Copy the selected items. The Copy Items window displays.
4. On the Copy Items window, select your Thumb Drive (this is usually your E: drive). Click Copy.

And that’s it!

(Many thanks to Charles D. who contributed this post)

Occasionally, you might try to print a document only to have the printer sit idle, taunting you with it’s quiet defiance.

The year is almost over (yippee!) and computer resources like ink and paper are sometimes harder to find. So, before trying to print again, and again, and, for those of you who are especially determined, even a third time, please check the print monitor to determine the printer status.

After hitting print the first time, the printer icon will display in your task tray in the lower right side of your window. It looks like a tiny, little printer. You probably need clear the queue of all earler print jobs.

To clear the queue:

1. Double-click the print monitor icon in the task tray. A list of items in the queue will display
2. Highlight the top job in the queue
3. Select Document Menu/Pause
4. Highlight the second job listed in the queue
5. Select Document Menu/Cancel
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until only the first (paused) job is left in the queue
7. Highlight the last last (paused) job and select Document Menu/Cancel

If you are still experiencing printing problems:

1. Unplug your computer for at least 60 seconds
2. Plug it back in
3. Restart your computer

If you still cannot print, please submit a Help Request and our TSSPEC will be there to help ASAP!

Here’s a little something to make you smile after a long week at work!

Enjoy and have a marvelous weekend!

Download Video: Posted by tekkieteacher at TeacherTube.com.

I am loving Diigo. I know I’ve written about this site before, but the more I use it, the more I like it. I’ve been bookmarking sites like mad, and I’ve set up networks with a lot of the Edubloggers I read so that I have access to their bookmarks, too. It’s a bit of information overload, but most definitely provides a wealth of information and useful links. You can find my links at http://www.diigo.com/user/Tekkieteacher. If you decide to set up an account, feel free to send me a friend request and join my network. After all, in this Web 2.0 world, you are what you share!

One of my latest additions is Boolify Project. If you’ve ever wondered how to efficiently search the web, this tool will show you the way!

SOLs are approaching very quickly! I remember when I returned to education in 2004 I was a bit taken aback by the World Geography pacing guide which had me finishing instruction by April 21. It did not make much sense to me since the last day of school was not until June. And then I remembered — SOL End of Course exams are actually given in May, many weeks before the end of the school year. (I still have issues with this, but that’s a topic for another day)

With that in mind, I know many of you are getting ready to delve into SOL preparation and review for your students and you may not know where to find our SOL online resources. At the start of the school year, I moved them all to our web portal. You can find them under the category “SOL Preparation”.

If anyone is aware of any resources that are not included in the portal, please post a comment with the link so that they can be shared with your peers. Then, I will add them to the portal ASAP.

Be glad you weren’t teaching back in 1915! I found number four especially curious….

1. You will not marry during the term of your contract.
2. You are not to keep company with men.
3. You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function. 
4. You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores. 
5. You may not travel beyond city limits unless you have the permission of the chairman of the board. 
6. You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother. 
7. You may not smoke cigarettes. 
8. You may not dress in bright colors. 
9. You may under no circumstances dye your hair. 
10. You must wear at least two petticoats. 
11. Your dresses must not be any shorter than two inches above the ankle. 
12. To keep the school room neat and clean, you must:  

• sweep the floor at least once daily
• scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water 
• clean the blackboards at least once a day 
• start the fire at 7 a.m. so the room will be warm by 8 a.m. 

While the above rules apply to female teachers from 1915, I did also look for rules that applied to male teachers. Apparently, there weren’t very many men in the profession at the turn of the century. What I did find was not too different, but you will be relieved to know that men were given one night off a week for “courting purposes”.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I love my PLN (Personal Learning Network). During the last few months, I’ve set up networks in Twitter, Diigo, Delicious, and Classroom 2.0 and I’m learning so much! Last night I needed to find another way to convert a .wav file to a .mp3 file because my converter wasn’t working. I posted a question to Twitter and had my answer within minutes!

This week’s featured websites are ones suggested by my “friends” in my PLN.

The first came from Jim Gates’ Tipline and is called Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning. The name pretty much says it all!

The second came from one of my Diigo contacts and is called 4Teachers. The primary objective for this site is to provide teachers with nice resources they can use to integrate technology with instruction.

The third one comes from Greg Smith at Tech Ed Know-How and is called Real World Math. This one looks really neat! It provides lessons where you use tools like Google Earth to teach math.

I had heard this statement before. The first time was at the JMU’s Content Teaching Academy where I had the opportunity to learn from some really wonderful fellow educators and technologists. I’ve read about it, or versions of it, in many of the Edublogs I follow. I heard it again today, during David Warlick’s session at the District’s Closing the Gap Summit. Every time I hear or read about it, it really hits home for me. This is the reason why educators do what we do — we strive to prepare our students for the today’s world and the future that lies ahead of them. However, it is more important than ever before in the history of education that we prepare our students for their tomorrows without resorting to yesterday’s methods.

So, what was so wrong with our yesterdays? Absolutely nothing, really.

I can still remember Monday nights when my family gathered around the TV to watch one of the four channels available, physically getting up to change the channels. Luckily, we all liked MASH so there wasn’t much arguing over what to watch, although we did argue over who would do the channel changing.

But for our students today, this scenario is completely foreign. It is not their reality nor is it their future.

Why is this a problem? It’s a problem because all too often we find ourselves teaching the way we were taught. It’s what we know and understand best. But yesterday’s teaching does not match our students’ reality any more than the scenario above does.

Let’s imagine we have mastered teaching in today’s world, employing current methodologies that are relevant and meaningful for our students. Even given that, how can we possibly prepare our students to succeed in a world that is changing so rapidly? In his presentation Warlick stated, “For the first time in history our job as educators is to prepare our children for a future we cannot clearly describe.”

OK….so we are supposed to teach using new methodologies to prepare our students for a future about which we have absolutely no clue….feeling overwhelmed, yet?

While this is a totally understandable feeling (and one that isn’t all that unfamiliar to most of us in education), I hope that at the same time you are also feeling excitement regarding the potential there is in today’s classrooms for some truly amazing learning experiences. The Flat Classroom Project, where students from different parts of the globe collaborated on projects together, is a great example of 21st Century learning. More than ever before, learning is no longer restricted to what happens within the classroom’s four walls. Teachers today have the opportunity to increasingly become facilitators of learning rather than distributors of knowledge. In the 21st century classroom, our students have the opportunity to become active participants in the learning process rather than passive consumers.

So while feeling overwhelmed is understandable, please don’t let it extinguish the excitement you may feel about the wonderful possibilities there are in today’s classrooms.

For those of you who were unable to attend Warlick’s session, it was awesome! Here are some his resource links.

http://davidwarlick.com/wordpress/?p=254

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OSOWSessionOutline

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurStudentsOurWorlds

I have heard some murmurs regarding the cryptic passwords that our new Resource Scheduler is generating. There is very little doubt that we all have WAY too many passwords to remember. So, to make your incredibly hectic lives just little bit easier, here are the directions for changing your Scheduler password.

1. After logging in, click My Profile in the top right corner of the window. The Edit Profile window displays.
2. In the Password field, enter your new password.
3. In the Confirm Password field, type the new password, again.
4. Click Save Changes.

There is no confirmation message, but the next time you log in, the new password should work.

Happy Friday! Like most of us, I’ve received some error messages over the years that definitely left me saying, “ummmm….huh?”

Was this really necessary?

An exercise in futility…..

Oh, OK. Wait….huh?

What are those options, again?

And my favorite…

I tried to upload this last night, but TeacherTube was experiencing technical difficulties (technology is great as long as it works ! :-))

Here’s a video on this week’s featured website, Diigo.

Download Video: Posted by tekkieteacher at TeacherTube.com.

This week’s featured website is Diigo. It’s online bookmarking, social networking, and instant messaging all rolled into one site. Here’s a nice Wiki about how to use it, too!

Here is today’s Feel Good Friday post! This video is from a group of entertainers who present at various education workshops around the nation. Have a wonderful weekend!

Download Video: Posted by tekkieteacher at TeacherTube.com.

Blogs are a wonderful way to publish information and provide commentary on topics important to us. This week’s featured websites are two blogs authored by some of our peers here in the district. The first is the Bulldog Readers blog authored by our librarians for the Virginia Reader’s Book Club. Be sure to check out the student comments on each of the books. The second is the BRMS Blog done by their ITRT, Frances G. The BRMS Blog has some wonderfully detailed information about technology in education.

In addition, a number of our teachers are using blogs more and more through the SchoolFusion AfterClass suite of tools. To check out any of these blogs, go to our school webpage and then check out the Teacher Profiles under For Students & Parents. The teacher’s blogs are linked to their profiles. The entries and commentary from our World Languages classes are especially neat!

Here’s an interesting commentary on our favorite piece of legislation, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, done by Tom Chapin. The original video can be found at http://www.notonthetest.com/.

Download Video: Posted by tekkieteacher at TeacherTube.com.

Would it surprise you to know that the dropout rate among new teachers is higher than the average dropout rate of students over the same four-year period? And the biggest reason why is NOT poor salaries. Check out Pete O’Reilly’s post from The Pulse.

Here’s a fun little clip for all you Simpsons fans out there.

Download Video: Posted by tekkieteacher at TeacherTube.com.

Have a great weekend!

What is Web 2.0? Here’s an example:

Last night I was twittering with other Edubloggers where I learned about a live EdTech webcast with Danah Boyd on social networking and education that was starting in just a few minutes. I logged in and joined the live chat while listening to the live audio stream. While participating on the chat I learned about Diigo, SqoolTools, and Buzzword, bookmarked them all on del.icio.us,  and added one of the participants in the chat room to my del.icio.us network.

It was way cool.

This is not your parents’ Internet.