Digital Eyes

I have been having a lot of conversations recently about the power of social networking. Tools like delicious, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others are everywhere we look. Radio hosts invite people to Twitter about their shows. Everyone advertises by saying, "Check us out on Facebook!" What does it all mean? Many people I have spoken to are concerned that social networking is just online meaningless blabbering. I disagree. Think about how you converse. When you are talking to one or two people, everyone focuses on the same conversation. That is how email works as well. But what happens when 20 people are in a conference room? Multiple conversations start to take place. You, sitting in the middle, have to decide which conversation to participate in. Maybe halfway through, you decide to switch to another conversation. Such is the way social networking works. You don't pay attention to all of it, but choose what elements are relevant to you and ignore the rest. So why bot...

With my apologies to President John F. Kennedy, I think this is a question we all need to ask ourselves seriously. In my conversations with people, it often comes up, "What will technology do for us?" In other words, how will it make our test scores improve, how will it make my life easier, how will it make me a better teacher? The answer is simple. IT won't. However, if we ask the right question, technology can be a powerful tool to help us improve our students education, make our lives easier, and make us a better teacher. The question we need to ask is, "What are we going to do with technology?" If we use the technology to communicate with our colleagues, it will improve our lives. If we use the technology to access information, we will become better teachers. If we use the technology to creatively solve problems and communicate our ideas visually and in an engaging way, it will improve our students. If we use technology to connect our students to people arou...

Timetoast is a great website that allows you to create online timelines. You can add dates, type notes, and even add images for each event. Then just mouse over a marker on the timeline and view the notes and image for that event. You can share the link or embed the timeline into your webpage. Timelining is a great tool not only for history, but also for sequencing events in a book, or planning to write a narrative story. Check out these examples below. http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/4879 http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/3918 http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2581 *pic from http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/7572

I enjoyed a session today on Video Games in Education. On the panel were the following four people: Jim Bower-Whyville John Rice -IT director in Iola ISD blog-http://edugamesblog.wordpress.com/ Donna McKethan-Director of Career Tech Ed at Waco ISD Lee Wilson- Principal Consultant for Headway Strategies The discussion was fascinating. It centered around how important it is to engage the students of today. Lee made a great point about how gaming has been a learning strategy throughout history. Kids have always learned through games. What has changed though is that technology has made the environment richer. One example of this is that gaming now includes a social element, which is extremely engaging for kids. Jim made the point that it is precisely the social element that is so important. He said that for the first time, video games and technology allow people to learn the way they naturally learn. I agree. Learning has always been deeper and more powerful when it is social and interacti...

I attended a session at TCEA today on Google Earth. I have used Google Earth quite a bit. I used it with grades 3-5 to students to study map skills and landforms. I learned a lot about new ways to use it. The presenters, Susan Anderson and Jim Holland, did a great job of tying the tools directly to curriculum and learning. Here are a few ideas: Search for landmarks or landforms around the world so students can see what they look like. Click on the icons to link to images, videos, wikipedia articles, and much more to get information about the location you are visiting. Have students create placemarks on places they visit and add information about that location. For example, if you are studying volcanoes, have students place placemarks on specific volcanoes and then add facts they have learned about its height, history, or geography. Use the placemarks to create a scavenger hunt for students to find locations or figure out their significance. Use the measuring tool to measure the distan...