Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

Thoughts from NYSCATE 2010 Conference

Monday, November 29th, 2010

I spent a few days at the NYSCATE conference this week. 

I dropped in to learn more about web 2.0 tools.  ToonDoo.com is a great place to do a 3 panel cartoon.  It is a great way to show what you learned!  Glogster is another cool tool to use.   It creates an interesting and creative way to present their work in a “poster” form.   They have the kids either choose a web based project or a paper option to help with the computer access issue.  To help with email issues, they use gaggle.net.  this is an email account that is moderated by the teacher…and it is free.  It has many filters to help you monitor your class.  Bubbl.us is a moodle alternative.  Makes for some fun word pictures!  Dropbox.com is a great alternative to student jump drives.  It does have a 2 mb limit….good for just docs.  It works with the plaintext app for the iPad.  Quizlet.com is a great online review for your content.  You can search and find content from other teachers  if you don’t have one set up.
Vokiis a great way to set verbal directions for assignments as an alternative to written directions for kids.  It allows you to explain more.  Try out blabberize for the images of people talking…should be a fun tool for school or home.

The teachers that presented have their students post their work to their wikispace. 

I dropped into a creative commons session to help understand the different cc levels.  It was pretty neat to see all the sites that help you find content that is free to use.  The Mother of All Funk Chords was a great YouTube video that molded together many videos and sounds to create a masterpiece of cc content.

After attending a session on the student response system form SMART, I realized that all mc homework and math problems should be inputted…saves on correcting, gives an instant report and feedback to students.

Won a bullhorn from a raffle….do I really need it?

Yes I do.  One of the presenters- Brian Smith, asked me to use it at the end…..hehe…..I may get thrown out….

Some smartphone fun.

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Foursquare.com

Fun stuff.  Thanks to my buddy Grover, I have a new thing to do.  It is easy, addictive, and adds on nicely to geocaching. Foursquare.com gives you a way check in with where you go….and even score some discounts if the place knows about foursquare.com

So far I have enjoyed going around and playing this.  I seem to have a drive to get in at least one check in a day…and so far I haven’t missed one! 

Next time you are on facebook and see that someone just checked in….now you understand!

Life gets so busy

Monday, June 28th, 2010

It is amazing how crazy the end of the school year gets.  I just looked at the date of my last entry and was blown away.  I didn’t think that the month would go that fast.  Final projects, end of the year slide shows, reports, data, ordering….and that was just at work.  My eBay empire dwindled (but that is ok because it was time to revamp).  My Amazon empire went up…thanks to a great program that I learned about.  It is good to get a fresh start of Summer.  I know though….it will go fast!

Start Small….

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

So the other day was Career Day at school.  My first question was why did we move the date….it hit officially over our Spring Break, so we were a week late.

The best part of the day was Totally Courageous Basketball.  The white guy couldn’t jump.  He didn’t slam dunk.  But boy could he spin a crowd, or a ball, or four for that matter! 

The biggest point of his message was to break your goals into small parts.  You can fail over and over again…but that one small victory leads to the next.  He couldn’t spin 4 balls and juggle 3 from the start….he couldn’t even spin one. 

Food for thought.

Goals- make them

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Goals should be acheivable, measureable, and realistic.  It is hard to set goals and keep to them.  Keeping an office organized….a good goal, but it doesn’t fulfill the requirements.  I am going to look at myself and set some goals upcoming.  90 day goals, 1 year goals, 5 year goals.  Today is the first day of the future.  Gotta move forward to get anyplace.

Anywhoo….loving the Spring Break.  Spending time with Chrisitine and the boys is a great thing.

New beginnings

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

So how do you move forward?  You move away from insanity – doing the same action repeatedly expecting different results.  I have been trying to better myself.  How do you do that?  EDUCATION and ACTION.  Being a teacher, I understand the importance of lifelong education.  You can only get better by pushing yourself to find more information to build your skill sets.  At the same time, those useless tidbits of knowledge are just that without action.  You need to apply what you have learned.  Well, here is to Jit, Adam, and Alex. My mentors will help me learn and take action.  Failure to move forward and take action is failure to grow.

My new blog home…

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

I figured it would be about time to create one of these.  I have had many online presence in the past…here is just another that makes total sense.  I am not sure just where the direction of this will take me, but hey, the journey could be fun!  Stay tuned!