I must apologize for not keeping up on my blog recently, but I did have a distraction–I broke my femur right at the hip joint in a bicycle accident that required emergency surgery. Four pins later I awoke in a hospital bed with very limited mobility (I needed nurses to even turn me partially on…
I have had several days using the iPad as my main device (yes, I temporarily ditched my laptop) at the ISTE 2010 education/technology conference and discovered several crucial tips to make it usable as a computer replacement as well as some challenges to consider. Why bother replacing a laptop? Two huge issues: weight and battery…
Also posted at TIE-Lights Many educators may be familiar with Lit Trips on Google Earth where teachers and/or students post geographical information around the story lines of great literature. Google Treks follow the same concept, but are not limited to just literature–treks can be created using virtually any content area. My first session at ISTE…
With the previous one (iPad Tools for Info Junkies–Part 1) we covered a variety of tools to better handle large volumes of web information. So why bother? With the overwhelming amount of information on the internet, info junkies need to find efficient ways to sift, process, and share. Because the iPad has some limitations compared…
Over the years I have been an on-again, off-again user of Linux. I find Linux so interesting, but in my mind it has been hard to embrace it as an operating systems for mainstream users. Of particular problem has been installing or making any changes to software configurations and making Linux work with available hardware….
In a previous blog Who is to Blame for Cavalier Attitudes About Privacy?, I questioned whether privacy invasion is much a problem of lax attitudes from us users as the companies who abuse our privacy. In the companies’ defense, we as users do not have a very good process to express our expectations to privacy,…
Yesterday at work a RSS headline crossed my screen that caught my eye, and I clicked on it thinking I would take a quick glance–Roger Ebert gets his voice back: “Uncanny. A good feeling.” which led me to the Esquire article: Roger Ebert: The Essential Man. Little did I expect I would get drawn down…
Sorry for the long dry spell–I am living proof of the joke: “What are your hobbies?” “I have none, I am a homeowner.” While watching the gradual deterioration of privacy over the years, we have been citing this same old joke in a different context: “What about privacy?” “There is none, this is the Internet.”…
I was excited about the Olympics, I really was. I am in the middle of some house remodeling (hence the long sabbatical from the blog), so I had the screen on in the background while working hour after hour. I probably heard more Winter Olympics the first few days than I had in the in…
In my last post, I highlighted reasons why we are not quite ready for individual teacher incentives. the second involving growth models. Compared to the status model (NCLB) of examining test scores, growth models have many advantages–the primary one being that comparisons are made from students’ individual growth, not comparisons of last year’s 4th graders…