Greetings from storm ravaged Connecticut where the Halloween Nor’easter still has many folks living without power. However with the openning of my school district I now have reliable access to wifi and wanted to share these pictures of the CT Day of Discovery CECA/CASAL Pre-Conference event from last weekend. Many thanks to all who attended [...]
The Connecticut Science Center in Hartford, CT is offering free admission for teachers during July and August. Follow the link below to their site where you can download a coupon and find more details. Not limited to CT educators. The Science Center is a wonderful venue beside the Connecticut River in downtown Hartford. It played [...]
SCIcon in CT was so much fun. A small but enthusiastic crew gathered at EASTCONN in Willimantic to enjoy the day. For me it was a a day of “ah-ha” moments as the presenters shared their tips and tricks. One quick picture here and a link to a few more on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevesokoloski/sets/72157625899518870/
Well it is snowing outside. It has been for over 16 hours, very hard. While the rest of Connecticut is grabbing its shovels to start digging out, we in the northeast corner wait for the storm’s the last bands of heavy snow to finish dumping and head up the Mass Pike. Good luck my northern [...]
As evidenced by several posts in the DEN Blog Network this is the time of year for reflection on things past, and musing on things going forward. INMHO nobody does this better than the multi-award winning educational blogger Larry Ferlazzo. Larry’s voluminous tweets and blog posts are always worth a read and follow, but there [...]
In my district we are beginning to roll out Office 2010. For us, this is a big leap up from Office 2003. The change over to the ribbon bar menu system is at once frustrating and delightful. It is as the reviewers have said, power users will have the difficulty. For them it often is [...]
Just wanted to pass on two quick links. First, one from CT DEN LC favorite – Staples, who announced in their weekly ad that they are beginning to sell Amazon Kindles in their stores. As a person who has been on a personal quest to sort through all of the new mobile media options trying to figure [...]
Internet Explorer 9 had its debut as a public beta (for Windows OS) last week. The reviews have been generally positive, even though it is not available for Windows XP, only Vista or Windows 7 (and really they want you to be on Windows 7) . Windows guru Paul Thurrott had good things to say [...]
One of the great things about summer is that you have more time to spend with newspapers and other paper media. So it was last Saturday when while enjoying a second cup of coffee that I ran into the article in about India’s announcement of a prototype tablet computer that they believe will market for [...]
To pick up where Howard left off, ISTE 2010, is an amazing source of inspiration and rejuvenation. It is absolutely huge. There are 14,000 people attending. The conference site is so big that there are internal “bus stops” where an oversize electric golf cart will move you from one area to another if you are [...]
This weekend the ISTE 2010 Conference kicks off in Denver. I am fortunate to be able to go and combine a little technology, with mountains, and old friends, three things dear to my heart. Even if you are not in a role as a pure technologist in your teaching, every teacher who uses technology deserves [...]
Is 2010 the year launching a new era of small portable devices? The iPad, the Kin, HP purchasing Palm, the Kindle, a new iPhone, and rumors of a completely revamped Blackberry OS all have made the news in recent months. What does this rapidly developing market mean for schools? Are we picking unripe fruit or [...]
The Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium (CTDLC.org) has a redesigned website, doing a nice job of re-organizing access to the many services they provide to the K-20 Connecticut education community. The CT Distance Learning Consortium is the gate way to CT Virtual Learning where high school and middle school students can participate in online learning.
The Connecticut Educator’s Computer Association (CECA) has opened registration for its annual fall conference! As usual the good folks at CECA are offering special deals on pre-conference registration. This year if you register as a group of 5, you pay for 4 and the 5th person goes for free. The special offer is good until [...]
Ever find yourself in the position where you “cant get there-ah from here-ah”? You know that you can use that file if only it was in the correct format! Here are a couple of tools that may help. The first is an online file conversion tool – Zmazar (http://www.zamzar.com/). In Zamzar you upload a file [...]
Many thanks to Lucy Gray who passed along a link to the recently released 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition via her Facebook posting. The research based report looks at tech trends that will impact K-12 education over the next few years. Here is a bit from Alan Levine’s (cogdog on Twitter) introduction for the New [...]
Last week I had the good fortune to participate in a workshop led by Discovery’s own Kathy Schrock. The Stafford Public Schools under the leadership of their Technology Integrator (and CT Discovery Education Leadership Council majordomo) Lynn Reedy, were awarded a grant for this school year under the CT State Dept. of Education’s Enhancing Education Through [...]
Do you know about Gazelle? Gazelle is an online recycling service. The company pays you cash for used electronics (cell phones, laptops, mp3 players, projectors, blu-ray players, digital cameras, and more). You look up your item in their online data base, describing the condition, the site makes you an offer, and sends you a box. [...]
At last week’s EASTCONN Regional Tech Council meeting colleague Marji Roy of the Ashford Public Schools passed on a wonderful app for iPod Touch and iPhone. The folks from Nuance who make the PC speech to type program, Dragon Naturally Speaking, have a free app for the iPod Touch/iPhone, Dragon Dictation. The app launches and [...]
The month of February brought news of two developments in the social media marketplace. One, an ill-fated debut of Google’s service called Buzz, a second almost under the radar announcement by Microsoft, about social media plug-ins for Outlook. If you are a person who has not chosen to clutter your life with the streams of [...]
When you use your Google tools, have you turned on Google Labs? Google Labs is the place within the Google-verse where experimental features for Google products are put out for trial by users. Google Labs provides a centralized location where you can looks at dozens and dozens of new ideas that Google engineers are playing [...]
Some folks via Twitter passed along a link to an open source multi-platform math tool called GeoGebra that could serve as a free alternative to Geometer Sketchpad. GeGebra is supported by an active wiki based user community that offers support and sharing of educational materials from an international pool of educators using the program.
Are you a Pandora user? I am an early adopter of this Internet music service and even as they have gone through their growing pains, royalty fights, and now their drop in ads and 40 hours per month free / premium model, I continue to be a big fan. If you are not familiar, [...]
PBS’s Frontline premiers “Digtal Nation” tomorrow night on its broadcast stations. The program and some great additional resources are available on the companion website. It promises to be a provocative look at our always on, always wired world. Check it out on air, or online! Many thanks to the wonderful Nancy Hovorka for forwarding the [...]
Over the next three days over 75 formal educational convesations and many many more informal conversations will be happening at this year’s Educon 2.2 Conference. This unique gathering at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia will bring aout 500 educators together for a truely amazing 3 days. One of the best thinjgs about it is [...]
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