The eTech|Ohio Educational Technology Conference starts Monday in Columbus. This is the tenth year for the conference, which usually draws several thousand people. The theme of this year’s conference is “Transforming Education Through Technology,” with conference strands covering classroom integration, e-learning, emerging technologies, leadership and planning, infrastructure and support, and staff development. Keynote speakers this year include oceanographer Robert Ballard, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, … Continue reading eTech Conference

A recent discussion about providing access to students’ home directories from outside of school reminded me of all of the open source applications we run on our servers. When faced with a new challenge, I frequently turn to the open source community to see if a solution is already available that can be adapted to our situation. As a result, our district has saved hundreds … Continue reading Open Source Servers

Time is running out for you to sign up for your free Yugma Premium account. In December, Yugma announced that they were giving away free one-year subscriptions to their premium service to any blogger who requests one. The offer expires January 31, though, so you’d better hurry up if you want one. Yugma is desktop-sharing software. It allows you to share your computer screen with … Continue reading Free Yugma Premium

Back in the dark ages, I remember being very upset about the amount of money I spent in the college bookstore as an incoming freshman. Every course had at least one textbook that had to be purchased. English had several books, but at least they were small and relatively cheap. The kicker, I remember, was calculus. This was no $35 paperback like the structured programming … Continue reading Textbook Economics

Magic Kingdom Epcot Hollywood Studios Animal Kingdom Pop Century Resort Getting There and Home [piclens-lite-link] Continue reading WDW Pics

I showed Ustream to my tech team earlier this week. Here’s how it works: you go to the Ustream site and sign up for a free account. Once you have your account and you’re logged in, you can select “Broadcast Now” at the top of the screen. A Flash applet loads, and asks you if it can use your webcam and microphone. After approving this, … Continue reading I Stream, You Stream…

Last week, Bob Sprankle posted two new Bit by Bit podcast episodes. These were the last two recordings of presentations made at the Christa McAuliffe conference in New Hampshire back in November. It looks like he saved the best for last. Dr. Tim Tyson was a middle school principal in Georgia before retiring last year. He spoke on the transformational change that tool place over … Continue reading Blogging and Leadership

Debbie loves this one. Alvin posted last week about Jott, a service that lets you use your cell phone to send yourself reminders. That’s cooler than it sounds. Here’s how it works: you call the service with your phone. It identifies you by your callerid. It asks you who you want to send a message to. You can select yourself, or anyone whose address you … Continue reading Jott

When you save a file, the program you’re using saves it in a particular format. The format describes the way the various elements of the file are stored. For example, let’s say you write something in a word processor. Maybe you boldface some text, or change the margins, or add a picture. Different word processors will store that information in different ways when the file … Continue reading MS Office File Formats

A few weeks ago, I went Christmas shopping. A certain member of my family has been grumbling for years that she doesn’t have a navigation system for her car. The technology has been getting better, and prices have been coming down, so this seemed like a good year to get her one. My initial thought was to get her a bluetooth GPS receiver and software … Continue reading Box Readers

It’s the time of year when we pause to reflect on the roads we’ve traveled, the chasms we’ve crossed, and the journey still ahead. Last week’s EdTechYearly got me thinking about the progress we’ve made this year. And yet, there are still those burning questions of whether we’re having much effect outside the world of educational technology. If you haven’t yet, you can share your … Continue reading Reflections on 2007

As 2007 draws to a close, I can’t help but think about how much things have changed for me since I jumped in to to the EdTechTalk community a year ago. I realized at the end of 2006 that the people producing this excellent weekly content are real people. I can send them messages, and they’ll answer. I can blog about them, and they’ll comment. … Continue reading Professional Growth