Fine Tech in the Classroom

Thank goodness for my PC Card!  I am fortunate to have a husband who is as crazy about tech as I am, so we budget for our wireless cards.  He travels a lot and often finds that he cannot get a connection in a hotel in which he is staying or the company he is visiting has to give him permission to use their internet - so - the wonderful PC wire card is great.  I am able to check my email (not the schools - down) and get to my Google docs where I have a lot of my information stored.

 Today, we are back in school and as usual after a long break, all internet and email is down.  I have been unable to get into our district’s email for over a week.  I don’t know why, in this day and time, that a business (and yes, a school should be run as a business) can operate without their internet service.  If this were a business, the employees and management would be jumping up and down and work would grind to a halt.  As educators, we change what we planned and move on without stopping (well, I didn’t, I have my PC card - and I was able to get to that Brainpop movie and to Discovery Eduation).  The teachers are unable to enter their attendance or enter grades and the secretary cannot run report cards.  I know they are frustrated. 

Last spring I found this site http://www.contentgenerator.net/ and made one game but forgot about it.  I was looking into my lesson plans and remembered it and how my students loved playing the game.  They have several free games you can download and customize to your lesson.  I used the “Fling the Teacher” game and “Teacher Invaders” as review for my Greek and Roman unit.   Kudos to the maker of this product.

Thanks to Jen at Jenuine Tech.com for organizing and facilitating the holiday card exchange.  My class participated and have sent out their cards and just received their first card from Connecticut.  They are looking forward to seeing where the cards are coming from, especially those from overseas.  She is also having us create a KMZ file for Google Earth so that we can view the location of all participants - what fun!

I don’t know how I’ve not done this for so long, but I have finally joined Facebook.  It’s a little addictive.  I keep finding myself going to it to see what my friends are up to - truly could be hooked.

I must have been buried under a rock since I have just now found this cool tool for fun!

Thanks to whoever added the new presenations templates for our blogs.  I absolutely love, love WordPress and the flexibility.  I’ve been using WordPress since Dreamhost added as a “goodie” to those who use their service.  This template is my favorite.  You are able to add you own photos.  

Other free WordPress blogs I have use is through the WordPress site and through Edublogs.

My students are trying to decide on a name for our new mascot.  I found an easy poll to make part of my website.  Go to PollDaddy to create your own for your site.  This is our mascot, nameless:)  He comes from animationfactory.com

I am taking an eLearning class through our state PBS group.  It is called ” Wikis and Blogs and Podcasts and Skypes.”  While I’m pretty confident about blogs, I have been wanting to really create a wiki with my students.  So I created one through pbWiki.  We learning about Greece, but I’ve got that covered through my blog.  I was thinking about learning and discussing about internet safety and bullying.  I’m looking for some good resources on both on the internet.

I keep changing my class blog template.   I like the clean lines of this one and my students enjoy the animation I get from animationfactory.com that match with what we are learning in class.