Dave’s been trying to get me to try Ubuntu out as a desktop OS. I’ve tried to run Linux on the desktop several times. It just always seems like it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I can’t find the drivers I need. Or I can’t run the applications I use. Or it’s just too much of a pain to use. I’ve tried a bunch of … Continue reading The Journey Begins

I always enjoy reading JDub’s Technospud Blog. She does a lot of reflecting about technology and education, and frequently asks some great questions and provokes some wonderful discussions. Earlier this week, she commented on teachers’ reluctance to use technology. She’s frustrated by the perspective that her teachers have of technology as an add-on. It’s one more thing they have to do. They don’t voluntarily use … Continue reading A Snail's Pace

I was listening to the September 11 edition of Women of Web 2.0 this morning when a comment by Vicki Davis stopped me in my tracks. She was talking about how difficult it is to teach students to be critical of information they find on the web. If it’s in Google, it must be true. While making her point, she sited this example: When email … Continue reading Email Peeves

The main criticism of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. I don’t know the first thing about the Napoleonic wars. But I can go to the Wikipedia article and edit the entry and act like I was there. I can change anything I want. When I save it, it looks just like the rest of the information on Wikipedia. But it’s not accurate. A … Continue reading Validating Wikipedia

To whom it may concern: I would like to add my endorsement for Jeff Lebow as Technology & Learning Leader of the Year. Through his Worldbridges communities, he has made it possible for countless education professionals from all over the world to interact with one another, share resources, and build personal learning communities. My involvement with Worldbridges began in 2005 while searching for education-related podcasts. … Continue reading Jeff Lebow

The Worldbridges community is planning a an Equinox Webcastathon this weekend (September 21-23) to give webcast academy participants the opportunity to hone their skills. I’ll answer your questions now. What is “the Worldbridges community?” Worldbridges is a collection of communities that use new media tools to help people connect, learn, and collaborate. Let’s say you have a group of people who are all interested in … Continue reading Equinox Webcastathon

I know. We have to prepare our students for a future we can’t even imagine. They’re going to be doing jobs that don’t exist yet using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems. I’ve heard this from Karl Fisch and Ian Jukes and a bunch of people who stole it from them. Our students have to … Continue reading Defining 21st Century Skills

In an online discussion in July, we were talking about Moodle hosting. I commented that self-hosting a Moodle server is fairly easy for most school districts, but that you do need someone on staff who has a pretty good understanding of what’s going on. Others in the discussion felt that a hosted solution would be better, because the teachers could focus on the coursework and … Continue reading Mondays

Here it is: View Larger Map Continue reading Test of Google Map Embed

I’ve tried many times to switch to Linux for my primary desktop operating system. I’ve tried Red Hat, Fedora, Mandrake, White Box, CentOS, Ubuntu, Edubuntu, you name it. I always get stuck in the same places. There’s a device driver I can’t get. Or there’s a software application I have to run that won’t work. Or the user interface is just a little to clunky. … Continue reading Virtual Desktops

I was talking with our high school media specialist this morning about anti-plagiarism tools. We’ve been subscribing to Turnitin.Com for the last few years, but we really haven’t used it enough to justify the expense. Based on last year’s use statistics, it looks like we paid about $7.50 per paper to have it checked for plagiarism. I remembered an EdTechWeekly episode from last winter where … Continue reading Combatting Plagiarism

When I was in high school, we spent a lot of time on the “correct” format for citing sources in research papers. We had to learn where to put commas and periods and parentheses, the order in which things like author, title, publication date, and page numbers went, and when to use underlining and quotation marks. My English teacher was a stickler for formatting, and … Continue reading OttoBib