Fresh air…

I am taking my kids out camping today. Not really going anywhere this turkey holiday. We will not be out all week, just for a day.

I love the great outdoors, minus the snakes. I guess that is why I usually select the fall & winter months to go “roughin’ it”. I had a brief thought shared on twitter contemplating on going tech-less. Then when I decided on going on a geocaching excursion, that killed that idea. So as I dusted off my Garmin Etrex Legend, I uploaded two way points from geocaching.com. I may take a few pics of the found cache and campsite.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Social Bookmarking and the Educator

Every educator needs to believe in the following cliché…” Work smart, not hard.”

Now how does social bookmarking come into play? Well, as a die-hard muxway (this name is not sexy at all!) ….no, del.icio.us…. no, I mean delicious.com user since its inception in 2003, I cannot imagine how I would capture and retrieve such great websites links over many years and many computers.

If social bookmarking and delicious is new to you, let me share with you the benefits that I am enjoying.

1. Retrieve my plethora of web favorites/bookmarks from any computer (yes, even at school! delicious.com is NOT block by my districts web filter!)

2. Find other users such as educators, and browse their nifty links; and then save them as my own!

3. Organization of websites via tags (tags is a web2.0 concept making the magic of social bookmarking to occur.)

4. Subscribe to specific tags to discover new web links

In a research paper by Gabriela Grosseck titled Using del.icio.us In Education goes more in depth on my topic. I must say that there are other online social bookmarking resources out there, however I highly recommend delicious.

Yes, I have been teased by other educators when referring them to find specific weblinks from delicious, however when they find what they need, they get past the name.

Technology Tools (or Crutches) in Education

crutch

(n) : a device to assist in motion as a cane, especially one that provides support under the arm to reduce weight on a leg; something that supports, often used negatively to indicate that it is not needed and causes an unhealthful dependency; a prop

definition provided by ninjawords.com

It is nice to know that technology is reaching to more students each year. For years, math teachers have debated about the issue of calculator usage in the classroom. Teachers struggle with the idea students becoming dependent on calculators rather than exhausting one’s own dendrites.

Now, how does this concide with the issues math educators deal with a daily basis? I have learned that students will soon be writing using the computer. As we know that the new fangled word processors now have tools such as spell and grammar check. As adults that know the grammar rules (somewhat) and how to spell (sometimes), spell & grammar check “has our back.”

I am not against using technology in math or LA class. However, I am for quality education and work. If technology produces quality products which support evidence of learning, I am for anything that will assist 21st century learners reach the mark set by local, state, and national standards.

Having an ol’ skool mind, I know that we struggle that students must know the basics, what do you think?

Whiteboard Challenge #5

Yes, I took the plunge and upgraded my SmartNotebook to version 10. It took this challenge for me to do it since the containers functionality is not REALLY integrated like it is in the ACTIVflipchart software for the Promethean board.

The activity that I created was pretty simple using the flash-based app. Found out about how to access the app in Notebook v10′s Lesson Activity Toolkit from a website (ep. 34) referred in the Smartboard Challenge wiki.

Notebook file

Barak & I…. We admit our BB addiction…

Yes I must admit. I love my BlackBerry smartphone (and apparently so does President-Elect Obama.)

I current own a BB Curve (fiening for the new Bold.) I have found many uses for my phone. I have listed my top 5 reasons continue my BB usage…

1. twitterberry
2. image capturing w/decent quality
3. crime deterrant
4. access to work & personal email (using qwerty keypad)
5. on-the-fly gps

Yes, my list is very simple. However right now, the only feature that I am missing is the video recording capabilities which the Bold currently provides. I don’t need or use the MP3 functionality my BB has, because that is what my 30GB video iPod is for.

Before I laid my hands on the BB, I was dying for an iPhone. When the madness surged and problems arose, I diverted over to the BB. I have been thumbing my qwerty keyboard to death ever since. I can honestly say that I tried the iPhone touch screen keyboard, but.. ah ah… no go…

I can’t imaging trying to swiftly kick out a tweet at a stop light or replying to an email while driving on an iPhone. Not that I’ve tried or done that, but you get my point.

Sorry for going a little off topic but…RIM, my question to you is, why try to compete in the touch screen market? If so, keep the qwerty keypad! IMHO, the BB Storm will fail miserably. Before its launch, the Storm has already been put through the ringer per this article.

Oh well.. one day, I will look forward and share with you how much I enjoy my BB Bold (unless Apple releases an iPhone with a qwerty keypad!!!)

WordPress = Web Publishing

I had the marvelous opportunity to attend Charlotte WordCamp held at the Charlotte Observer.

Here are the main points that I picked up from all the presentations….

1. Keep it simple (theme, layout, plug-ins, & posts)

2. Be patient for WP version 2.7 – It rocks!

3. Blog until it hurts

4. Twitter is not evil

5. Allow others to input as guests or the usual via comments

There was more that was received, but if you wish to hear for your self, audio clips can be found at my server here. Peace!