Overheard today: "We don't live in tents!"

One of my extremely excited and talented assistant project managers for Horizon Project has set up an appointment to instant message the project manager in Doha, Qatar today. They had an appointment for 8 am and 12:30 noon! (Uhm -- we got out at noon for spring break!).

As they made their intros and said hello, first she exclaimed to the class:

"Hey, guys -- they go to school on Sunday through Thursday."

Another one of my students didn't "get" what she was saying and said, "Let them just TRY to make ME go to school on Sunday."

"No, you don't understand, she said, their weekend is Friday and Saturday."

Now this is interesting because I had told my students this... in fact, I have told them multiple times, however, it was this exchange that got their attention. It was this exchange that TAUGHT them!

Then, as I peeked over her shoulder (as I always do when my students are instant messaging), I saw this conversation. (I got permission to take a shot of the screen over her shoulder.)



...and on they went about misconceptions about the culture of South Georgia and the Middle East. It was a conversation that impressed me with its depth, breadth, and humor.

It was an honest, real exchange between two students who were very professional but very authentic at the same time.

We've only entered the "handshake" phase of this project and yet the conversations move me almost to tears when I see the almost visible shifting of my student's world views.

It is something that needs to happen more!

tag: hz08, horizon project, education, teaching, flat classroom, Julie Lindsay, innovation

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Is TeacherTube a Bad Idea?

I'm experimenting with posting directly from diigo -- I've annotated and highlighted from the original post from my friend Shmuly Tennenhaus.

My friend Smuly is a youtube expert -- he's been on many nightly news programs and in newspapers (see the New York Times article on him.) I'm still turning over the thoughts from his blog post that he shared.. he has made a few good points that I had to go back to teacherTube to see.

We have to use teachertube on horizon because it is the only video sharing service that is unblocked in all of our schools. We are cross posting to youtube for those schools that allow youtube access.

SchoolFinder Blog » YouTube Versus TeacherTube Annotated

My notes:

• He has been cited multiple times for his videos and has been on more news tv shows than i can count. He does know video! - post by coolcatteacher


• Many schools do block it for bandwidth reasons. - post by coolcatteacher

Some highlights from the article:

"Video-sharing can be very useful in the classroom. And many schools do block access to sites like YouTube...

This is more than just semantics. If the name of the site makes ME cringe, how will it ever appeal to a teenager who shops at Abercrombie and has Timbaland streaming from her iPod?...

For example, maybe YouTube can make an education domain that does not have access to the rest of the site. Google would like to be a player in the education space. As would Yahoo. And Microsoft....

3) TeacherTube is ad-supported. (Yup; I am not sponsoring the site!) The ads unfortunately are anti-education!

a) University of Phoenix Online is all over the place. Yes; they are into education etc. Here are the FACTS: UOP overall graduation rate is 16%. The national average is 55%. And University of Phoenix Online? Their graduation rate is 4%! Ouch.

b) Check out the screen shot of TeacherTube. That’s an ad for a get rich scheme site. Check them out. The landing page has a guy without his shirt on. The guy does have nice pecs. Still, I doubt schools would be excited with the association."

This leaves me wondering, we've got to give some method of making money to these businesses. If educators aren't paying for a service then the business either has to: 1) sell it to us or 2) sell it to advertisers, or option 3) Sell upgraded services to educators.

There are costs involved.

The rule about free stuff: there is no such thing as free stuff!

I'm thankful for companies such as wikispaces who give us great service for free. I also like that schools can purchase upgraded services from them.

I think that companies that serve educators need to take a long hard look at what they do. My honest opinion: Google Adsense and education just don't mix. Period.

Contextual advertising will often give innappropriate options for students to BUY term papers, or "date sexy women in Qatar" (the ad that almost killed flat classroom when at the time Ning was google adsense loaded.)

We just need to think about it educators. It is free but is it the right thing?

We should consider what we're doing. I don't have answers and I'm not saying run away from TeacherTube which I've supported from the beginning. I am saying that I think it is time to evolve and think about some of this.


(Oh and this blogging from Diigo thing is cool.)

tag: Diigo, Ning, Godtube, Teachertube, youtube, Shmuel Tennenhaus, digital storytelling, education, teaching

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YOU SPEAK: Looking for Current Research on Interactive, Study Focused, Customized Learning Methods of Teaching -- Please Share!

I received this e-mail today. I've edited out who it is from and the author's name who is requesting it for privacy reasons...

I have several research topics that I've uncovered for this request but NEED to know what you have. (Don't have time to post the links.) Please share your insights, projects, and RESEARCH! Thanks!

" Vicki -
Do you have evaluation studies showing the impact of Flat Classroom project or Horizon on academic achievement (or other social benefits - like higher school attendance, fewer behavior problems, etc.)??? ***AUTHOR**** is looking for evidence [if] the new model of pedagogy (interactive, student-focused, uses inquiry methods, customized for individual learners) like your programs use are “working.” In addition to evidence from your programs, if you could direct us to any other evidence from programs similar to yours that you know of – that would be great. We’re working against tight book deadlines now (yay, the end is near), so any info you could get us soon would be much appreciated!"

We are in the process of doing studies on these projects but do not have any full scale information to be released. What we've found from a very small sample is that we've seen an increased willingness on the part of the students to work with and befriend people from other parts of the world (particularly those who they consider are very unlike themselves) as a result of the project. We're testing this with our horizon project now.

We are looking for researchers for Flat Classroom in October - December NOW who would be a third party to be involved in this research. We're offering.

HELP! What do you have that I could share today? Post here or message me on twitter.

tag: hz08, research, pedagogy, testing

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Yahoo! supports OpenSocial; Yahoo!, MySpace and Google to form non-profit OpenSocial Foundation

Community organization to assure neutrality and longevity of specification for building social applications across the web

SUNNYVALE/LOS ANGELES/MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. (March 25, 2008) – Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google today announced they have agreed to form the OpenSocial Foundation to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web. Yahoo!’s support of OpenSocial and role as a founding member of the new foundation are landmarks for the rapidly growing specification which will now offer developers the potential to connect with more than 500 million people worldwide.

The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008. The foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction.

“Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users,” said Wade Chambers, Vice President – Platforms, Yahoo!. “Our support builds on similar efforts with the OpenID community and will expand the opportunity for developers and publishers to benefit from an open and increasingly social web.”

“OpenSocial has been a community-driven specification from the beginning,” said Joe Kraus, Director of Product Management, Google. “The formation of this foundation will ensure that it remains so in perpetuity. Developers and websites should feel secure that OpenSocial will be forever free and open.”

The OpenSocial Foundation website at www.opensocial.org will serve as the portal for the community to find all information about OpenSocial and the foundation as they evolve. Developers and website owners can now visit www.opensocial.org for the latest specifications, links to other resources, and the opportunity to get involved.

Engineers from Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google will continue to work together and with the OpenSocial community to further advance the specification through the new foundation, continuing several core elements of OpenSocial since its announcement by Google, MySpace, and many others in November 2007:

• all specifications are available under a Creative Commons copyright license
• public community involvement shapes the specification’s direction
• an open source reference implementation called Shindig is being created and developed as a project in the Apache Software Foundation incubator, available at incubator.apache.org/shindig/

About OpenSocial

OpenSocial addresses an emerging problem for developers who are eagerly building applications people can enjoy with their friends: before OpenSocial, if a developer built a "favorite photos" application to work on one social network, it would have to be built all over again to work on another site. OpenSocial tackles this problem at its technology roots, providing common "plumbing" that lets social applications run on many different websites without requiring duplicate work from either developers or the websites.

The result is a vast distribution platform for social applications, whether they are for sharing photos or playing games or arranging real-world meetings or any number of other activities – everything is more fun, interesting, and useful when users can involve their friends and contacts.

Steady Evolution, Important Milestones

Millions of people around the world are beginning to see the benefits of the OpenSocial platform as new features appear on their favorite social networks. MySpace launched the MySpace Developer Platform, which uses the OpenSocial APIs, and began rolling out applications to its users. orkut has also started making OpenSocial applications available to its users, and hi5 will do so at the end of March.

Thanks to the Shindig reference implementation, most websites can have a proof of concept of OpenSocial applications up and running in days. That means websites need only to make this small time investment in order to make thousands of new social features available to their users.

Global members of the OpenSocial community include Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, XING, and others. In time, OpenSocial will unlock more powerful and pervasive social capabilities across the entire web, as developers’ applications can easily reach users across any of the websites, web applications, or social networks they use.

Conference Call Information

Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google will co-host a conference call to discuss this announcement. The conference call will be held on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time (1:00 p.m. Eastern Time). To access the conference call, please dial +1 877-545-1407 within the United States and +1 719-325-4875 from international locations. Replays of both calls will be available until midnight, April 1, 2008 at +1 888-203-1112 domestically and +1 719-457-0820 internationally. The confirmation code for the replay of the call is 1411164.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit pressroom.yahoo.com or the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal.

About MySpace

MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media Inc., is the premier lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, discovering popular culture, and making a positive impact on the world. By integrating web profiles, blogs, instant messaging, e-mail, music streaming, music videos, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, college communities, and member forums, MySpace has created a connected community. As the first ranked web domain in terms of page views(c), MySpace is the most widely-used and highly regarded site of its kind and is committed to providing the highest quality member experience. MySpace will continue to innovate with new features that allow its members to express their creativity and share their lives, both online and off. MySpace’s international network includes 20 localized community sites in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Mexico, Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, Denmark, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Japan and New Zealand. Fox Interactive Media is a division of News Corp. (NYSE:NWS – News, NWS.A – News; ASX:NWS – News, NWSLV – News).

*Among the top 2000 domains comScore Media Metrix, September 2007. For more information on comScore Networks, please go to www.comscore.com.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit www.google.com.

Media Contact:

Yahoo!
Denis Roy
denisroy@yahoo-inc.com
+1 408-349-2570
denisroy@yahoo-inc.com

MySpace
Dani Dudeck
+1 310-969-7148
ddudeck@myspace.com

Google
Sean Carlson
+1 650-253-1173
seanc@google.com

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Google Announces Internet Availability of Proxy Materials for its 2008 Annual Meeting of Stockholders

Mountain View, Calif. – March 25, 2008 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the Internet availability of proxy materials for its 2008 Annual Meeting of Stockholders under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s new Notice and Access rule. Google’s proxy materials can be found on its investor relations website at investor.google.com.

Pursuant to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s new Notice and Access rule, companies may now satisfy their proxy materials delivery requirements by delivering a "Notice of Internet Availability of Proxy Materials" to stockholders, providing Internet access to the proxy materials, and providing a printed set of proxy materials by mail to any stockholder who requests them. Google has elected to take full advantage of these new rules in order to minimize impact on the environment and maximize cost savings relating to the printing of the proxy materials. By implementing the procedures permitted under the new Notice and Access rule, Google reduced the number of printed copies of its annual report and proxy materials this year by more than 84 percent.

Google’s 2007 Annual Report on Form 10-K and proxy statement for its 2008 Annual Meeting of Stockholders have been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and may be viewed on Google’s website at investor.google.com. Google’s stockholders may obtain hard copies of these proxy materials free of charge by following the instructions provided on its website or in the "Notice of Internet Availability of Proxy Materials".

Google’s 2008 Annual Meeting of Stockholders will be held on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 2:00 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time, at Google’s corporate headquarters at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, California 94043. A webcast of the Annual Meeting will be made available at investor.google.com.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Contact:

Maria Shim
Investor Relations
650.253.7663
marias@google.com

###

Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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Going from "It" to "Out": Dealing with network withdrawal

Sunday after going to church and eating lunch with my family, I got to relax by the pond, watch the millows meander and the dragonflies hum as I fished for catfish. I enjoyed being "out" of it.

We went home and watched the The Pride of the Yankees, about baseball great Lou Gehrig (which is worth seeing just to see the Real Babe Ruth play himself) and had a very interesting discussion about how quickly a person arises into "fame" and then can be snuffed out due to health reasons or retirement.

It was a fascinating discussion with the kids and my husband about going from being "It" to being "Out." (Gehrig died in his thirties from the disease named after him.)

My children observed that that seems to be the problem with Britney Spears here in the states. They think that she will, "Do whatever it takes to stay on the front page... not able to deal with the fact that she's no longer 'it.'"

I also see this in the blogosphere and twittersphere
It is a dangerous path to trod to be dependent upon the feedback of others for one's self esteem.

For a while, when I first emerged into the blogosphere, and then had to go away from it for a while, I was plagued with guilty feelings. What would I miss? Who would I not respond to? What would happen without me? Would I be left "out?"

Then, it slowly dawned on me that the twittersphere and blogosphere and all such things will rock on just nicely without me and that is OK.

In today's world of hurry and scurry, we have still got to be able to disconnect and slow down!

A life to live!
I also think that most of us feel "out" at least some time or other.

For example, I didn't have time to do color Wars 2008 (the world's most massive game of rock, paper, scissors using Flickr) this weekend -- I had things to do with my family... and that was OK!

And I missed out on the Christmas "elf" santa thing a lot of twitters did over Christmas. I haven't been able to do any memes and am quite behind on my RSS reader.

Does this mean that I am insufficient? Does this mean that I'm doing something "wrong?" Should I feel "guilty?"

Realization that we ARE "it"
And almost by divine providence, I opened up my "Real Simple" magazine and saw this poem from Maya Angelou:

"When we come to it/
We must confess that
we are the possible/
We are the miraculous,
the true wonders
of this world/
That is when,
and only when/
We come to it."

Maya Angelou from A Brave and Startling Truth (c) 1995, Random House

Being "it" is not being "in."
It is being me.

In this world of immersive, submersive social networking -- we can easily lose ourselves. I find that it is easy to get lost in a sea of friends and left wondering where and who I am.

We have got to teach students and ourselves how to navigate these waters and continue to have a strong, grounded, purpose and life. How to be "called" when everyone is call-ing.

I find that I HAVE to make the time to spend alone in prayer and reading my Bible. I also have to find time alone to read and just think and ponder.

I even have to find time to fish.

Let's go fly a kite
I saw something terribly disturbing last Friday. We were out flying kites with the kindergarten class and my six year old son who is a student in the class. Many parents came out to enjoy this.

As my husband and I struggled to help our son get his kite up -- we'd get it up and it would fall. It would go up, he'd run a while or run into another kid and then it would get tangled and fall. WE laughed and had a blast.

But there was a little boy in the corner. His kite wouldn't fly.

You see. His Mom was on her cell phone.

The little sad boy with his lip quivering was trying to get the kite in the air while the Mom was giving her half attention as she exclaimed why she didn't like flying kites any more.

Her body was there. She wasn't.

Parents need to wake up
I'm tired of hearing parents complain about kids and cell phones when parents are horrible offenders too!

I see so many people so busy being somewhere else.

We're trying to be "it" and don't want to be left "out" so we forget "it." We forget the meaning in life, I think.

There is great beauty in watching a movie with one's family. Or reading a book with your child. Or flying a kite. Or pretending to catch a fish while the minnows meander and dragonflies hum.

There is also great beauty in being able to be instantly available to my family. There was also great comfort in the direct message twitters of my extended network of friends when my grandmother passed away this past summer. There is great laughter in the prods and pokes of my friends throughout my networks.

I do not reject the new novelties we have found.

I only state the obvious.

Beware the things you try to master lest you become the servant and it becomes the master!

Technorati authorities change like the wind as does readership, blog stats, friends, links, twitters and blog comments. And staying grounded in who one is has never been more important.

My advice on finding "it"
Remember to intentionally use your time to do the things that will make your life better.

Clutter in your house, your life, your computer, and your habits will take away from your life, not add to it. Consolidate what works and throw away what doesn't.

God is everywhere... you're not. It is not possible for humans to be everywhere and be all things to all people and the pressure to be "it" whether real or imagined is a WASTE of time.

Be who you are and respect others who aren't you. My Dad always says that "even a fool is right some of the time" -- listen to all sides and make up your mind for yourself.

Just don't let technology take over your life... it should add to it. Recent additions to my life like TimeBridge and Diigo are time savers and I plan to keep using them. Other sites I've tried recently don't work and will go the way of the dodo.

All this to say...
Learn, use, and tinker with technology... don't take it all so seriously.

Sometimes I literally walk away from this blog because I simply am not going to live the rest of my life worrying about my technorati ranking. I'm here to blog for the long haul about what I'm doing.

I'm here because it means something to me to be able to share and encourage others even though I'm so far from perfect.

I'm here because I have a calling not only to teach and parent and learn but a calling to blog and share with the most amazing profession of incredible people in the world... the educators.

Remember your noble calling, teachers.

And remember, you've got enough people in the world making you feel guilty about this and that without adding any more fuel to the fire. Your best is good enough... read your RSS when you can.. twitter when you can... blog when you can. And walk away from it sometimes so you can stay sane.

tag: Diigo, TimeBridge, learning, education, teaching, technorati, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, inspiration, technology, perspective

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This Week at Westwood: Horizon Evolves, Digiteen Begins

Sometimes I just like to share the things that are happening in my classroom. They may seem old hat to me (and my students) but understanding HOW these things work is tough for some people just learning what is happening.

1) Computer Science (10th)
This is the class that is participating in the Horizon Project. We're continuing the four week "handshake" period before the start of the project on April 15th.

Why a handshake?
We've found that the most difficult part of the project is helping the students meet or "handshake." This is also difficult because we have to help all of the teachers get up to speed AND there are a lot of holidays that happen around this time -- which vary all over the world.

So, during the handshake, we:

• Join all the members to the wiki and Ning.
• The teachers go through the Getting Started Checklist
• We hold weekly teachers meetings in Elluminate and record it for those who cannot attend.
• The teachers have a private google group that gets fired up and hot for our private communications and questions.
• Students fill out a pre-project survey to ascertain their thoughts about working with people from other countries.
• Students post their "introductions" -which we work hard to be personal but not too revealing. This is a tough balance.

Horizon's Blogs are Hopping!
It is very exciting to see what happens as we ask the students to start blogging. There is one particularly profound post from Crystal in Illinois:

" So to a certain extent, all of us on the Horizon Project 2008 are looking to change the world, even if just a bit. So I guess this blog is to acknowledge the problems of the world and things you would like to change about your surroundings/community or things that need to be changed in the world...."

She goes on to talk about what she wants to change. Other exciting posts to me are:

Jehan in New York has been appointed Assistant Project manager for a team and is "taking the bull by the horns." He says:

" As much fun as just socializing and talking about music is.
I have some work related news....According to the wiki. I am assistant project manager for the social operating systems group...Here's the link to the wiki team page in case you do not know what you are doing. Link

I'm gonna make the group for social operating systems. So SOS people should join."

We don't "officially' kick off until April, but we're finding that the students are organizing themselves if we just give them a little time. There is a lot of angst with everyone wanting to know who is on their team, and we've unveiled the teams today... perhaps a few will change but they are pretty set.

I really enjoy the insight into Easter from Jess living in Qatar and the really great responses that are emerging from the other students or Ali's discussion about hobbies and Aaron asking about when students sleep and when they do homework, Jamie T talking about the handshake period.

I am also impressed that the students have started self-organizing and creating groups and am very interested to see what is beginning to take shape in the group forums (I really like the group pictures!)

Meanwhile, we didn't get to "handshake" as much as I would like this week.. I had to finish up a module on computer hardware. When they had 10 minutes after their test Friday, my students were more excited about the fact that you can add photos in Ning comments and change the look of a Ning page with some pretty cool new templates. You can see this on my profile page.

Chris Morgan's class in Illinois is so excited about Ning, they are planning to get rid of their forum and set up a private Ning.

What is next for Horizon?
The teachers will be meeting again next week. We plan these ahead of time via wiki. We'll be working on the templates and are enjoying using the tags in wikis to help us organize what we need to proofread.

I've also had my students learning about the new features of Profiles in wikispaces. You can customize your page. Star pages that you're working on and use tags as well. Look at my wikispaces profile page (just click your wikispaces name to see yours) to see how I'm using it to manage my wiki work.

2) Computer Fundamentals (9th)
We're continuing the "handshake" period for the low-key DigiTeen project between Julie's class in Qatar, Barbara's in Austria, and mine at Westwood. We didn't publicize this just because we wanted to keep it small and manageable since we also have HORIZON!

We completed watching the PBS series "Growing Up Online" which is definitely for high school students. All of the students in digiteen are watching this and it makes for VERY interesting conversations.

My students have been finishing up their work in Excel, which has also included some work in Google Spreadsheets and will take them into ZohoSpreadsheets next week.

They continue to maintain their personal, public blogs and blog every chance they get... even when it is not an assignment. These blogs have become an extension of who they are.

3) Keyboarding (8th)
We've FINISHED UP THE KEYBOARDING! Last week our class average broke 60 words a minute and the students have done very well. They've already been taken into the private class Ning, where all of my classes communicate.

Embedding Files and Blogging
I've taught them how to embed files (which just got easier with a recent improvement to Ning) and they have been blogging as I teach them about Voice. (I have them embed videos from youtube and blog in first person as one of the people in the video.)

Introducing Video Making
I've taught them basic video capture with their logitech quickcams and how to upload video to the Ning. On Friday, we had a "Fun Friday" and I taught them how to use Animoto and embed it on their private Ning.

Licensing
We talked briefly about licensing and needless to say, my students always HATE it when they learn that they cannot use the music on their ipod to make their movies. It makes them ANGRY! (But everyone else does it on youtube, is always their response. "But you're not everybody," is mine. "We do things the right way here and I hold you to a higher standard."

It is tough, but you cannot teach movie making without broaching this painful subject with kids.

What's next?
We'll begin work on efolios AND I have to delve into MLA papers and formats.

4) Senior Movie Making
We are working on Graduation and the Senior Slide Show. I have shared folders et up on the server for these students and now, they are just dragging the photographs that they bring in into our folders.

We have a definite system for working on these. (I have a "used" folder to which they drag folders after they've put a copy on their local hard drive to use to make the PhotoStory.)

I also have a student who is drawing some artwork for me to photograph for graduation. I'm excited about it because he is really good at it and it is his hidden talent! So, this class is editing movies like crazy. Creating special mixes of music in Audacity for the slide show, scanning, and filming.

It is a lot of fun to do the slideshow but it is VERY VERY hard work. I have an external hard drive of my own and secretly make backups of the photographs pretty often just in case something ever happened.

5) National Honor Society
While this isn't a class, I'm had a breakthrough there. Ihave a pretty big database that I'm about to abandon that tracks the student time. I'm about to go to a self entry system using Google Spreadsheets and a form and have them turn in the documentation. I'll just check it off instead of having to enter it. I'm not going to take hours to enter their time any more... they can do it!

6) 5th Keyboarding
I'm FINALLY done with this class -- whew! It is very difficult to teach 6 classes and have one planning period. I'm just getting caught up on Everything tech support now and am still very behind! I left the students with the knowledge of how to play typershark -- a cool game from www.popcap.com that is wonderful (after you know the keys.)

My Week
This has been a very busy, crazy, and tough week. I won an award Friday but cannot tell you about it until next week.

I'll just say that I literally cried in front of the whole middle and high school I was in such shock. And for my students who know me... they know that I don't EVER do that.

Finally, after two years of this stuff.. the local paper HAS to include what my students and I are doing. And that in itself was enough to make me cry...

Have a great weekend.

tag: blogging, education, hz08, Ning, learning, Animoto, teaching, innovation, Vicki A Davis, coolcatteacher

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