This week, we’re offering two professional development classes on using technology in the classroom. In the first class, we’re covering a series of interactive web tools including Protopage, Blogging, Podcasting, Wikis, and Moodle. Because he introduces this better than anyone else in our district, we convinced middle school teacher Joe Zenir to introduce this for us. Here’s the video of his presentation: http://www.ustream.tv/flash/video/480600   Continue reading Introduction to Moodle

On Tuesday, June 4, the EdTech Posse will be joining the Women of Web 2.0 in their weekly webcast at 9:00 PM EDT. The show will include a game show component, where the two teams will compete against each other to will fabulous prizes, which mostly consist of just bragging rights. You can help by submitting game show questions. All of the items in the … Continue reading Game Show

Hopefully by this point, you’ve put the cybersafety issue into perspective, implemented some basic measures to protect your kids online, and used resources to help teach kids how to protect themselves. Now it’s time to talk about filtering Internet access. Conceptually, web filters are very simple. When using a filtered computer, requests for web pages, pictures, and other resources are first sent to the filter. … Continue reading Protecting Kids Online 4: Filtering

“The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.” — Elbert Hubbard In the first part of this series, we tried to cut through some of the irrational fears about online safety and put the issue into perspective. In part 2, we looked at some tips for parents to help keep their kids safe online. Now, it’s time … Continue reading Protecting Kids Online 3: Teach Your Children

In the first part of this series, we examined the issue of cybersafety. Hopefully, we dispelled some myths and put the issue into perspective. While it’s important to protect our kids online, and it’s important to teach them to protect themselves, it is not at all likely that our children will become the victims of cybercrime, even if they haven’t been schooled on the best … Continue reading Protecting Kids Online 2: Tips for Parents

I’ve received a couple questions lately about keeping kids safe online. We see news reports all the time about the danger of social networking sites, and the problems with posting personal information online, and the number of children who have been exposed to inappropriate material online. Today, I’m starting a series of blog posts about cybersafety to take a fairly comprehensive view of the issue … Continue reading Protecting Kids Online 1: How Big is the Problem?

Once upon a time, there was a voice in the darkness. The voice spoke, and her words were truth. The truth enlightened the huddled masses, who were huddled because they were cold. The heat was lower and the lights dimmer than normal because there was an energy crisis. As they sat on carpet squares in the overcrowded room, they absorbed her truth. Never end a … Continue reading Truth

It’s been an RSS day. It started last night, actually, when I was trying to figure out how to get an RSS feed of an entire Google Reader account into a Protopage (still haven’t figured that one out). Then, there was the challenge of helping my wife get an RSS feed of her Twitter messages on her blog. This morning, two colleagues and I were … Continue reading Burying the Feed

The Brecksville-Broadview Heights Schools now have an email subscription service for content posted on the district and school web sites. Parents, community members, and others interested in the schools may subscribe using the “Email Subscription” link on the district’s web site. When signing up, subscribers decide which categories of information they want to receive, and how often they would like updates. For example, a parent … Continue reading Email Subscription Service

It’s been a rather busy couple days on the Ohio Technology Coordinator Listserv as the state’s tech coordinators have debated various strategies around Microsoft Vista. While there’s certainly no consensus, there do seem to be three schools of thought among those who are entrenched Windows users: Keep using XP: Windows XP does everything we need it to do. Vista doesn’t offer any compelling reasons to … Continue reading OS Dilemma

I ran across this video yesterday. It was created by the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University. Led by Dr. Michael Wesch, this team of cultural anthropology undergraduates is exploring the impact of digital technology on human interaction and human interaction on digital technology. http://www.teachertube.com/skin-p/mediaplayer.swf College students are finding that sitting in a huge lecture hall writing while some professor drones on for … Continue reading A Vision of Students Today

Earlier this week, I was asked to respond to an inquiry from one of our high school students. He’s writing an article for the school paper about technology in the schools, and he had several questions about how technology has changed society and school since the start of the millennium. Because this was an inquiry about the high school, my remarks are more 9-12 focused … Continue reading An Encounter with an Interviewer