David Warlick started this conversation about free wifi access at the American Library Association conference this month in New Orleans.  Most (all right, both) of the technology conferences I’ve attended in the last year have had free WIFI available, but only in designated areas. This is the first time I’ve seen that they’re providing it for the whole conference (except the exhibit hall). He sees … Continue reading Wireless Access in Class?

Well, it didn’t take too long. Yesterday, this blog received about 20 comments to various posts, all within about an hour. Apparently, most of the things I write about are directly related to free online Texas hold ’em games. This morning, I had another 47 comments. Fortunately, I had WordPress configured to not automatically post comments containing links. I’ve tightened the parameters for comments, but … Continue reading Spammers Like Me

Wikis frustrate me. Back in ’91 when Tim Berners-Lee created the first web site, his focus was on an interactive medium. The web was meant to be a forum where everyone could be a publisher, everyone could contribute to the collective knowledge, and everyone could benefit from others’ contributions. It didn’t work out that way. The technical limitations to putting a web site online were … Continue reading Wet Paint

A subset of my tech team met today to work on the implementation of the Technology Academic Content Standards. These standards have been adopted by the Ohio Department of Education. While school districts are not technically required to use them, it is strongly recommended that we do so. In fact, the tool that school districts are required to use to develop our technology plans forces … Continue reading Have to Have to

We’re finally making some progress in the online learning environment. When I started teaching in 1993, I wanted to find a way to use the social, collaborative atmosphere of usenet in education. I was only interested in asynchronous communication — message boards — where people could contribute at different times. The advantages were easy to see. You could have longer discussions, and get into the … Continue reading Making Progress

I had the good fortune to attend a presentation by Mrs. Hricik’s first grade class at Woodland Elementary School last week. Her students have been working on their presentations for the last few weeks. Working individually or in pairs, they selected animals to study.  They used Google to find information about the animal, its habitat, diet, and other interesting facts. They also found pictures of … Continue reading Raising the Bar