This evening, Aaron Berthold and I presented to the Technology Steering Committee. Our focus was illustrating where netbooks fit in to education and how the netbooks are being used. Aaron spoke about from macroscopic perspective and I presented from the microscopic perspective of how teachers are using netbooks.

The presentation I created follows closely Robert Marzano meta-research for classroom strategies that have the greatest impact on student achievement. Presentation (ppt) The presentation contains links to many useful resources that are free.

This video below was created by Tom Fox and clearly demonstrates the benefits of using 1 to 1 computing with blogging to foster greater literacy among students. Watching the video, you’ll notice that several of the strategies that Marzano writes about are mentioned; summarizing & notetaking, reinforcing effort & providing recognition, and providing feedback.

The night before  Spring Break, we kicked off our 100 Mini’s Project. The participating teachers were presented with goals, expectations, presentations and more importantly the mini’s themeselves. We are using the Dell Mini 9 with the prestigious ubuntu (Linux) operating system.

I’m very excited about this project and can’t wait to actually see the mini’s in the hands of students. Here’s a glimse through videos published by Cari Roberts.

These students have access to a full range of applications that can be used to research, organize their ideas, collaborate and share. With the exception of Inspire, all of the applications below are also free and run on most operating systems (Linux, Mac, XP, Vista). So students that have family computers are able to utilize the same applications at home.

• ActivInspire (Activstudio 3)
• FireFox(Internet browser)
• GIMP (like Photoshop)
• Open Office
  • Word
  • Spreadsheets
  • Presentations
• XMind (graphic organizers)
• and much, much more!

I was reading one of my favorite blogs (NashWorld) the other night and stumbled upon the work of Punya Mishra from MSU. He has done some amazing work highlighting the need for utilizing relevant technology in the classroom with Lee Shulman’s work on Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

This morning I presented to the Technical Services Department five of my favorite ways that teachers are using technology in the classroom. Specifically, I focused on the computer, projector and visualizer.  There are thousands of examples to choose from, so it was nice to have a clean way of organizing my ideas. I leaned heavily on Punya’s work for the presentation below and am quite thankful that he shares his talents.

If you are interested, my attempt at blending Punya’s work with presentation is below in the form of a Google presentation. Below, I’ve added links to the 5 parts of Punya’s video. His videos are definitely worth your time. Check it out!

My Presentation on Creative Teachers | Punya Mishra’s Keynote: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,

I just heard about a colleague’s computer crashing. This is the 4th time I’ve heard of this in the last few days. This serves as a reminder to us all. If you haven’t backed up your files, this would be a good time to do it.

Here are some suggestions.

1. Drag and drop your important files on to your W drive. Be sure to log in to your computer and then click on “My Computer.” You’ll see your W drive on the list just at the letters.
2. Save your files to a thumb drive / flashdrive. If you plug your thumbdrive in to your computer and it doesn’t recognize it, try this. Disk Management
3. Share everything! Then if you loose your copy, your friends will have copies.
4. Back up your files weekly.

How do you back up your files? Or better yet, what do you do to remind yourself to backup your files?

image: http://flickr.com/photos/bozarth/298165264/

Do you have student laptops in your classroom? Or perhaps you have access to a mobile lab that you can check out. Either way here are a few resources you should look at.

1. Using Laptops in the Classroom by Tech & Learning (thanks Randy)
2. epals school blogs: A safe and easy to use place to give students to post work and discuss issues
3. Rules for Blogging