I'm Pinterest'd...

I've been slow to keep up with technology lately. Some of my friends have discovered pinterest. I know because I see some of their "pins" on facebook. I finally had a chance to investigate... Wow. Talk about a world of information. It's not good for someone like me. I could easily gets sucked into the world of pinboards. Oh course the ITS'r in me thinks "hmmm... how could I use this in the classroom?" Many different ways. One of which could just be a great repository of information for my students. I also found pinboards with Middle School Math ideas. Another one led me to a great website on Bloom's Taxonomy. Like I said, it's easy to get sucked in! Isn't technology amazing?

Digital Video has grown up...

Over twelve  years ago I thought my husband was cutting edge. His "hobby" was creating movies. At the time I was a bit annoyed by the cost of this hobby. He needed an expensive powerful computer with a powerful graphics card. The software he used was Adobe Premiere. He would spend hours in his home office creating the most wonderful home movie videos. He carefully put them to music and cut and pasted and "blue-screened" the kids into crazy backgrounds. The effort was worthwhile. The family loved our home movies. My younger brother even laughed that his buddies requested our home movies to watch during happy hour. They were creative and hysterical. Rendering the videos would take over 24 hours. The movies would take months to produce in my husband's spare time.

Now times have changed.... the digital video editing hobby of my husband has been replaced by golf and now the subjects in these movies (my kids) are 11 and 14 years old. I am amazed at how technology allows them to create videos on their iPhones. They can add music and special effects in a couple of minutes. No more overnight renderings. The movies are somtimes digitally edited on the iMac and then posted to youTube to share with friends. Digital video has grown up... it's affordable and easy to use. It doesn't take much time either - it's a perfect additional to our technical goody-bag of tools in the classroom.

Web 1.0, Web 2.0.... what's next?

I have really enjoyed this semester and discovering all of the Web 2.0 applications in education. The more I research, the more I find. The only problem I have is that the web is filled with so many amazing topics that I am constantly finding myself starting out researching one topic and then I branch out to a new topic. I started looking into Blogs and then I accidentally discovered Glogs. The next thing you know I'm on Glogster.com and I'm searching for math Glogs and wondering how I can use them in the classroom. Everywhere I look... there's another shiny marble and I'm off on a tangent. What should be a simple task takes me forever because I've gotten sucked into the web. The thing is, I've probably learned more about Web 2.0 by being on the web. It makes me understand a little what our student's are faced with. They have the ability to learn on their computer and research topics so easily. The problem is, can they stay focused long enough to answer the question at hand? Or do they even remember what was the original question?

It makes me wonder.. what's next. What will Web 3.0 bring?

The Sound of My Own Voice

I'm thinking that Podcasting might be another way to teach the Math 6 standards. I'm always looking for different ways to teach. My students get bored easily and I like to mix things up a bit. At the end of the year we're always looking for innovative ways to review the standards. I think a Podcast lesson might be a great way to accomplish the review. Instead of the instructor creating the podcast, I would have the students write and produce their own scripts. Each partner pair would be given the topic. They would have to teach the topic through a podcast. I think it would be challenging because they would really have to focus on the words and vocabulary without having a visual. All students would have access to all the Podcast either on their home computer or more likely their phone. My thought is that they would rather listen to the student produced Podcast rather than their teacher's voice... "WAH wa Wah Wah Wah"

A Wiki for Math? Makes Sense...

I never though about using a Wiki before but now I can see advantages to using one. I think it would be great to start a Math 6 Wiki for the county. It could be broken up by each standard. Math6 teachers could all contribute lesson plans, lesson ideas, assessments, projects. We can then comment on what worked and what didn't work in our classroom. Better yet, wouldn't it make sense for the Virginia Department of Education to host various Wiki's for each of the grade levels and subjects? Imagine the resources that could be made available to help our students? A Wiki is only as good as its contributors. Everyone would need to contribute and comment to make it work.

Confessions of a Blog Lurker

I must admit that I never kept a journal. It's not that I didn't want to keep a journal. I can't tell you how many times I'd go on a beach vacation and buy a pretty journal with a cool cover. I usually made one entry, maybe two. I am not a journal type of person. I never even kept a diary when I was a kid. I think it's because I'm not confident in my writing abilities. I especially don't want something published where everyone can see my thoughts. I guess I'm a shy writer. I majored in mathematics and computer science back when I went to college. Writing was not my forte. Oh, I could write technical documents, but they were pretty dry. Nothing blog worthy.


Now I'm faced with the dreaded task of blogging. I like to read bogs. I read them in envy. "Wow, I love how this person writes!"," Wow, what great ideas..." I don't even usually respond to blogs. I am a blog lurker. I really don't think I am alone. Upon investigation I discovered the Jakob Nielson theory on community participation. He called it the 90-9-1 rule. It states the following:


- 90 percent of users never contribute (the lurkers!)
- 9 percent contribute a little
- 1 percent of users account for almost all the action





I'm hoping that time goes by, I can become more comfortable in the public blog forum. I can definitely see the benefits to keeping one. Hopefully this won't be like my old summer reading journals.... one entry, maybe two. 

Inspiring Teachers - Mitchell20

This is my first post that will document my final semester in the ITS program at George Mason University. I am enjoying the background reading that I have done on what makes a teacher leader. My goal is to become a teacher leader. I am inspired by the stories I have read in the books as well as the stories I have read on the internet. One story really fascinated me, it's documentary called "Mitchell20" I have not watched the documentary but am looking forward to when it will be available in Spring 2012. Here is a link to the trailer of the movie...