It’s becoming increasingly clear that some things never go away. The Internet has always been that nebulous sort of place, where things change all the time. Sites pop up and disappear and reinvent themselves, and it’s never the same place twice. But it’s largely just an illusion. We’ve been converting to a new email system in our school district this school year. One of the … Continue reading 12 Copies

I found this by mistake, but it’s pretty neat. In Firefox, you can do tabbed browsing. Each tab can have a separate page in it, but they all show up in the same window. This makes it easy to visit multiple sites at once and switch between them without having dozens of different windows open. If you have two or more tabs open, though, you … Continue reading Schizophrenic Firefox

This is a test to see if I can post a podcast. As it turns out, I can. Here are the limitations, though: If I just post the podcast (like the high school people do for the morning announcements), I get the file just fine in my podcast receiver. I don’t see it on the blog though, so I can’t download it directly without subscribing. … Continue reading Podcast?

I finally figured out the problem with email notifications. I’ve been told many times by my most faithful reader that email notifications aren’t working, and that problem is showing up on other people’s blogs, too. I, on the other hand, haven’t been having a problem with it. As it turns out, the problem occurs when someone with a non-bbhcsd.org email address tries to sign up. … Continue reading Email Notification Problems

I’ve heard or read these lately. According to the January 2006 issue of Technology & Learning, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that: Amost one-fifth of teens blog. Teens from urban homes are more likely to share their work on the Internet than suburban or rural teens. Girls create more content than boys. Boys download and share files more than girls. Last week, … Continue reading By the Numbers

Thinking more about the possibilities for Wikis in the schools, lots of ideas come to mind. The collaborative nature of a Wiki can have many degrees. It could be a collaboration among a few people, or a larger group of teachers, or an entire school, or the whole world. It doesn’t have to be restricted to allowing everyone to edit everything. One possibility is to … Continue reading Wiki Project Ideas

If you don’t want to use our WordPress Installation for your teacher site, the next best thing is to use Edublogs. This is a free site where teachers can create their own blogs. It’s using WordPress, and it’s relatively ad-free. They’re using a newer version of WordPress than we are, so there are a few neat things that we don’t have yet. At the same … Continue reading Let the Students Write

Teachers’ Domain is a multimedia digital library for K-12 teachers and students. It includes classroom resources, lesson plans, and professional development resources in all academic areas. These resources are correlated to national standards. The site requires registration for use. It’s easy (and free) to register, but this process must be completed to comply with copyright and licensing restrictions on the materials in the collection. Once … Continue reading Teachers' Domain

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Science Digital Library is a collection of resources for education and research in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The resources are organized in multiple ways, so you can find resources by topic or by target audience. The content isn’t developed or maintained by the NSDL. It’s just an index of resources hosted elsewhere on … Continue reading National Science Digital Library

I just posted a page on Cyber Safety over on the technology part of the district web site. The district sent out a letter to parents in December warning them that some students are posting personal information on sites like Xanga and Myspace. Students (and adults) need to tread lightly when posting this kind of stuff online, because they could become victims of various forms … Continue reading Be Safe Online

One of the primary principles of the American democracy is right of the people to know what our government is up to. Across history, as government operations become more secret, they also become more corrupt, and tend to deviate from the values and goals of the society. There are reasons for the government to keep secrets. If we’re at war, we don’t want the enemy … Continue reading From the Source…

I’ve described podcasts, and given some examples of podcasts about education and technology. But technology is not an end unto itself. If these things are going to be useful for teachers, we have to use them to teach science and social studies and math. You can search the general podcasts repositories, but it’s hard to find things there. The categories are very broad, and there … Continue reading Finding Education Podcasts