We have a hearing-impaired sixth grader coming to our middle school next fall. One of the many challenges this student faces is the inability to use American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate with other students and with adults. While he certainly knows ASL, his teachers and fellow students don’t. So it’s difficult for him to work on those skills at school. His parents suggested that … Continue reading Sorenson

I received this email message yesterday from a teacher in my district. Teachers wonder why people don’t treat them like professionals. If we could set this up formally afterschool and provide either PD credit of stipends I think there would be insentive to come. Every math teacher in the building is going to be overwhelmed and need all the support they can get so that … Continue reading Readin' and Writin'

A school district technology coordinator expressed frustration today after learning about yet another WordPress update. Version 2.2 of the software was released last week. This is the seventh update of the software since the beginning of 2007. In this district, every staff member is eligible to have a blog hosted on the district web server. Because the district uses plugins and other features not compatible … Continue reading WordPress Excitement Wanes

Remember when phones were tied to locations instead of people? We had home telephones. When I called your number, a telephone in your house would ring. If you were there, you could answer it. If you weren’t, a machine would answer and let me record a message for you. Then, when you came home, you could listen to the message. When you call my home … Continue reading Unplugged

As part of our web site redesign, we’re trying to focus more on the people and the school community rather than the institution. In the past, we’ve included a lot of pictures of our school facilities on our web site. While the buildings are certainly attractive, they don’t do much to convey the message that we are all about people. As we’re prototyping the new … Continue reading Too Many Pixels

Soldiers in Iraq and Afganistan are using robots to do some of the military’s most dangerous work. The best way to remove a land mine is to step on it, but it’s hard to get people to volunteer for that duty.  That’s where robots come in. Specially designed machines go out into minefields and trigger the explosives. They lose a leg every time one goes … Continue reading Love the Machine

Fairbanks Technology Coordinator BJ Thaman posted this message to the Tech Coordinators’ listserv this week: We are in the beginning stages of creating a Moodle site for our district.  We hope to use this site for both classroom enrichment and professional development.  I noticed that the official Moodle homepage has a Moodle Xxchange where people contribute lessons for all to use and modify.  It sounds … Continue reading Moodle Sandbox

I’m putting my text in first. Then, I’ll switch to code view and paste: Click To Play This week a short history of Pertinax, perhaps one of the shortest reigns in imperial history. Also a virtual tour of the Naples Museum. Now, I’m back to visual mode. Continue reading From Blip.tv…

Here’s code for the general ibed: and this one is a link using the image tool: I’m not sure it can handle it as an image, though. This is the embed from a YouTube video. It’s going to get blocked by the Internet filter, but I can check from home to see if it works: Let’s try a hybrid approach. This is the YouTube object … Continue reading From TeacherTube

This is from Slideshare: See content above Continue reading Another Test

This is a test for email notification. Continue reading EN Test

We received a request to unblock a web site yesterday. The justification went something like this: I received an email message containing some inappropriate content. The message said that I had signed up to receive this content, but this must be a mistake. I tried to unsubscribe, but when I clicked the link, the site was blocked. Please unblock the site so I can unsubscribe … Continue reading Don't Click That Link