March 20th Technology Day

Here are the questions and discussion we had during our TTL Day!

Differentiated Instruction based on Expertise Level for the March Professional Development Day:

• Beginner/ Intermediate


• Awareness of tools available/ hands-on Activities

Offerings of courses:

• wireless labs


• projectors


• document cameras


• laptops


• Google Docs


• Wikispaces


• Blogger


• Basic Skills

We should allow people into our classrooms to see it in action, before March!!

We need to create a survey for the staff to complete to find areas of interest.

We discussed getting the TTL names out so that everyone knows who we are as well as David starting the Teacher Center Technology Series!!!!

Some stuff...

Here are a few books that I have recently read, or am currently reading that I highly recommend.

Free Lunch (Johnston) – a book which chronicles the waste of hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars (...depressing).

Energy Victory (Zubrin) – a comprehensive plan for breaking the “oil monopoly’s” power while bringing jobs and dignity to the masses (...encouraging).

Lee-The last Years (Flood) – A narrative of Robert E Lee’s life after Appomattox. Lee became the President of a college: Washington College became Washington and Lee. He did amazing things to heal the wounds of war from this position (brilliant and well written).

Other-than-that... Time flys! Our jobs become more important/demanding every day, and I continue to be impressed with the talent of our staff in their efforts to prepare our studednts.

Only semi-related to anything...

It's National Metric Week! This is the week that contains the tenth day of the tenth month -- 10/10 -- to honor the simplicity and whimsy of the metric system. The way I see it, we're supposed to be mavericks (can I even use that word with dignity anymore?) of technology and heralds of the future of education, right? Seems to me, then, that the metric system is the wave of the future, so get on your surfboard. Need ideas on how to metric-ify any class? Check out the links below!

Metric Week Activities

www.metric.org -- the United States Metric Association. Are you a member? Not to judge...but if you're not, you're just not cool. You get a newsletter and all sorts of dork....er...cool things.

New Screen Capture Software

Hey folks I recently came across a new image and video capture program that allows you to copy everything you do on your screen. It is called Jing!! I have not been able to load it on my computer a school but it is working well at home. I will let you know when it becomes available for the TTL laptops. YEE Haaaaa!!!!