Sitting in our upstairs lab for a PD (professional development) on our SmartBords. I have only had a brief time using one of ours and I am OK on using them but there is still more to learn about the board and the software that we can use. I like the feature that record what I am doing on the computer and it also records my voice though the microphone. I like this for the case when a student misses an important lesson and they can make it up the next day and this will not be a short overview it can be the whole lesson. I can also save this and the students can get to use it for review as they need it. Sounds like a Podcast to me. I will need to find time to put this to use.
That is another reason why I would like to get back to the classroom again. Being a Title I teacher for math the past couple of years has been nice and I feel like I am really making a difference with some really low students but…
being back in the classroom and using all the new technology what we have been getting is exciting to think about.
Nothing to much to report here.
We have had school canceled 3 days in a row for snow and wind chill warnnings.
Our school just purchased a weather station and software to have our data broadcast to the web. I am chomping at the bit to get it set-up and started. The weather station was bought using funds from a classroom grant the principal wrote-up. I’ll let you know when we are up and running.
The site for the weather network and equipment is
http://www.ambientweather.com/
The free weather exchange is a down-loadable software like the ones from Weather Channel and WeatherBug. I like this the best. It has much more than the others’ free versions.
OK everyone. Just to make it clear I am not the HGTV Eric Strommer.
I am a teacher in Michigan who happens to have the same name as the TV personality.
Here is a picture of me at the ROV workshop back in December in Traverse City.
As you can see we “look totally like bothers”.
Back from the Michigan site for the Discovery Educator Network Virtual Conference.
It was a good time. I would like to be able to have a quiet week home alone to be able to go through all the Web 2.0 tools and sites, be able to use the tools and sites to enhance my assignments and quizzes that I put together at Discovery Education Streaming. Here is just a partial list of what the virtual and in-person sessions talked about:
Voicethread.com
blabberize.com
slideshare.com
toondoo.com
moonk.com
mosaikr.com
truemedia.com
twitter.com
myplick.com
Some of the sites are not really appropriate for school use but a teacher to enhance their lessons can use the tool.
I also learned there is a way to use a “green screen” in moviemaker. I’ll try that out as I use that with my student broadcast team at school for their weekly news show.
Speaking of which; my session on putting together a broadcast team and using Movie Maker to edit and publish a student broadcast went OK. I could have done more with the demonstration of the program and had the teachers there use the program and make their own short show. Oh, well. It was only my first presentation at a PD/workshop/conference that was outside my school.
Now I will begin to focus on the demo lesson that I will do at the MACUL conference in March. At least I will be sharing the stage with another teacher from Flint.
