Saturday, November 27, 2004

Portable PowerPoint

Great site I ran across and must share with my fellow educators. They have an article on how the new iPod Photo can be used to deliver slides for our classes using the pricey new tech gadget from Apple. Maybe next year? "hack a day serves up a fresh hack each day, every day from around the web and a special how-to hack each week."
hack a day - www.hackaday.com

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Blogs and Wikis 101

Thanks to Patrick Crispen at California State University, Fullerton, CA, for making this available to my students and teachers.
Blogs and Wikis 101

Monday, November 22, 2004

GIS LIVE

The world was their oyster" on Wednesday as students from East
Columbus Magnet Academy (Columbus, GA) and Holmes High School (Edenton,
NC) made outstanding presentations in a live world-wide webcast.
Kudos to all of the students and their proud teachers and schools!

Fascinating sessions by GIS professionals and educators included "What
in the World Is GPS?," "Climate Change and GIS," "Public Health and
GIS," "GIS Careers," and "Visualizing Raleigh's Downtown . . . in 3D."

"We've worked hard to get the entire five hours of presentations made by
students and GIS professionals and educators digitized and archived on
our website. You can relive the excitement (or enjoy it for the first
time) by going to www.GISliveNC.net and choosing "Direct Link to Live
Webcast." You'll find many resources, including the speakers'
PowerPoint presentations.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Professional Development- NC Sea Grant

Please take some time to visit North Carolina Sea Grant's web page that lists upcoming workshops. There are some good opportunities in the near future for educators to get some Ocean Education training! Go to , click on Public Education, then on Workshops. This page is being updated all the time!

Ocean Awareness Days, sponsored by the SouthEast Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (SECOSEE), are set for the following days and locations. Get in touch with the contact person for details and registration information.

November 20, NC Estuarium, Washington
January 7-8, Catawba Science Center, Hickory
January 14, Discovery Place, Charlotte
March 5, NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh
March 12, Allison Woods EE Center, Statesville
March 19, NC Zoological Park, Asheboro

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

New Tech Toys

After being selected at NWA Teacher of the Year, the school system rewarded us with serveral recognitions. I invested the money on a Apple iPod. After reading the news that a major university in North Carolina had purchased each incoming freshman with an iPod, I was intregeded with how they were planning to use them. Education? I thought it was at first a joke. A music playing device used for educational purposes? I almost laughed. Investigating the way iPods could be used in an educational setting was not something I could Google. However, instructional strategies do exsist. The iPod can be used to upload audiobooks, and many files. Not to bore you with all the things they can do, let me mention how I have used my iPod so far. The first week, all I wanted to do we install all my CDs. That was a task. I read about a program called iPodderX. Wow! I have enjoyed that program with my iPod. Leo LaPorte, the KFI radio station Tech Guy posts daily RSS feeds. iPodderX lets me upload Leo's radio broadcast. I can listen to the shows on the way to work. I would love to do that, with a slant toward using technology in the classroom. Like why use Blogs. When I finish listening to the show, I can catch a few beats from the many tunes I have uploaded. The iPod is nice, but after using my friend's iTalk, I had to have one. ITalk? Yes, it has something to do with talking-- it is a voice recorder for the iPod. I also got a cover for the iPod called an iSkin. The skins are great. I can now stick my iPod in my pocket and not worry abouit it getting scratched. I have been thinking about how I can use the iTalk in class. Do you know of any good stratiegies to use? In the coming days, I plan to surf the net in hopes of finding ways to use our iBooks and an iPod.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

What is a Classroom Wiki?

The simplest online database that could possibly work.

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.

Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users. http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki

Wiki in my classroom: click on the link in the title of this article to view my class wiki.

In an attempt to stay on the leading edge of intructional technology, I have been experimenting with a class wiki.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

Classroom Astronomy

If you are up in the morning on November 4th or 5th about 45 minutes
before sunrise, there is a treat waiting for you above the eastern
horizon. Jupiter and Venus will be within one degree of each other. At
one point, they will be only a half a degree from each other which is
about the diameter of the Moon. Both planets are very bright and will be
easy to find.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Bombich Software: Carbon Copy Cloner

Have you ever wanted a simple, complete, bootable backup of your hard drive?  Have you ever wanted to upgrade to a larger hard drive with minimal hassle and without reinstalling your OS and all of your applications?  Have you ever wanted to move your entire Mac OS X installation to a new computer?  Then CCC is the tool for you!  CCC makes these tasks simple by harnessing the Unix power built into Mac OS X. 
Bombich Software: Carbon Copy Cloner