Each year, FirstEnergy awards competitive grants to educators and leaders of youth groups to fund math, science, and technology education projects. Teachers and youth leaders in areas where FirstEnergy has facilities or provides service are eligible to apply for up to $500. They’re specifically looking for projects that focus on electricity, but other math/science/technology projects are also eligible. Preference is given to one-time, one-year projects … Continue reading FirstEnergy Grants

APM’s Future Tense reported this week on the prevalence of poor Powerpoint design. Nancy Duarte, author of Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, isn’t afraid to mince words: We have a very putrid PowerPoint pandemic. It’s done so poorly it really doesn’t take that much effort to stand out among your peers or for your cause. A little bit of extra effort … Continue reading Better Presentations

I’ve always been more in tune with the school year than the calendar year. I was born in the fall. In the northern hemisphere, school traditionally starts in the fall. We’ve had a bit of a rest. It’s not like January at all, where the new year comes as an afterthought to the frenzied Christmas season. January 1 is like that lone rogue firework shooting … Continue reading Happy New Year

There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met. Part heaven, part space, or have I found my place? — Gonzo How is it we can know people we haven’t met yet? After nearly 20 years of doing this, I’m still amazed by that. I never met Lee. I can’t say that I knew her. I talked to her a few times. We … Continue reading New Ways to Remember

“Umm…” Conversations that start that way are never good ones. This was going to be no exception. “No one can log in. Is something wrong with the server?” Apparently, there was. It was late 2000, and I was pretty much on my own when it comes to technology in the district. My predecessor had hired a network consultant eighteen months earlier to set up the … Continue reading No One to Call

I was a few minutes early picking up my daughter, so I parked my car on the street in the residential neighborhood and pulled out the eeePC. There were four wireless access points in range, only one of which was secure. It would have been easy to connect to the unsecured networks. If file sharing were enabled on any of the computers in the house, … Continue reading Securing Wireless Networks

My brother and I had walkie-talkies when we were kids. I think we got them for Christmas one year. They were red, ran on 9-volt batteries, and had ridiculously long antennas. We used them constantly until the batteries died. Then, they fell into disuse (we never seemed to have a battery surplus). In the half-dozen years that followed, occasionally one would be discovered, and a … Continue reading One Walkie-Talkie

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