Wikis

This week we are learning about Wikis and Wikipedia.  In our lab assignment we were to search for the school where we work.  Once found, we were to make a notable entry or edit an existing entry to update some information.   My school is a small private school and did not have their own Wikipedia entry.  I wanted to change that but it will require a bit of time and research to put together suffecient quantity of information to make the Wikipedia entry worth while and not immediately slated for deletion.  I did find a mention of our school under the general Castro Valley, CA page listed under the Education subsection.  In this section, it says that Redwood Christian Schools has two campuses in Castro Valley, Crossroads Elementary at Neighborhood Church and Redwood Elementary at the Redwood Chapel Community Church.  This was inaccurate as 4 years ago the two campuses combined at the RCCC site.  I updated the entry to reflect that Redwood Christian has one elementary (K-5) campus in Castro Valley, CA. 

 

In addition, I created a Wiki of my own to relegate my adventures while Scuba Diving.  You can find my wiki at CA-Diver.wikispaces.com



Universal Design

This week we have been learning about Universal Design for Learning.  This concept basically asks a teacher to go back through their curriculum and strip it down and examine it in the context of its ability to reach every student.  How can we identify and then eliminate barriers to learning within our curriculum?  What new information, technology or delivery method can we employ to allow all of our students to benefit from the knowledge we have to give them.  Maybe we need to present the same lesson three different ways over the course of a week to ensure that the concept is caught by all our students.

We examined the UDL checklist and saw how this tool can give us a framework for examining our lessons.  As a practical exercise, I took a lesson plan that I recently created and looked at it in light of the UDL checklist.  Take a look at the lesson plan and the comments that I made in response to the checklist.  The UDL checklist is reproduced at the bottom of the lesson plan to tie he comments together. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SAXEFq1P7ybE9NH0JIv_do_TEtLsyZrw6VcqOzArKbo/edit

CEP811 Blog Lab

Today I am working on a lab for my new class, CEP811 Adapting Innovative Technologies to Education.  I was tasked with describing the differences between traditional web pages and blogs. 

In my experience, web pages are depositories of information.  There might be facts, examples, links to other resources, and of course advertisements.   It used to be that only geeks like me who knew how to program in HTML code could actually create and maintain a web page.  Today though, anyone can put up a simple web page using tools like Google Sites, or others. 

Blogs on the other hand are much more reminiscent of the paper journals of my youth.  Now most of us rough and tumble boys would never have thought of keeping a journal, but all of our sisters and female cousins did.  It was, and blogs are today, a collection of our thoughts, feelings and even ramblings.  Sometimes they contain our hopes and dreams and even though a fact or two might creep in, they are not primarily for passing on information about things... but our feelings about people and places. 

Even I, in my efforts to chronicle my journey through the Masters of Education program, find myself keeping a Blog... There are not many deep, dark secrets being revealed, but there is some link to the victories and struggles along this new journey.

CEP810 and ePortfolio SIG

Wow.. it seems like yesterday we were starting CEP810 and now we are 7 weeks into the course.  I have been so busy that I have not had the opportunity to post any updates. During this course I have been involved with a great SIG group that has been researching ePortfolios and their use in the High School environment.  This has been an eye opening experience and we have really created a great resource for someone looking to institute ePortfolios in their classroom. I am very proud of it.  I will have a post next week with a link to the presentation, which is in the format of an ePortfolio itself.  But for now, I wanted to share a link to our Diigo group as we have consolidated about 50 great links to resources, articles and YouTube videos on the subject.  Jump over and take a look...

http://groups.diigo.com/group/810-e_portfolio

The journey begins again...

After a few months off  for the summer break, I am back on track with the program.  I am also looking forward to applying some of the great knowledge I have aquired at ISTE 2012 and the 2012 Google Summit. 

To supplement this blog and to provide a place to apply some of the great tools that I have found, I created a new website called www.EdTechQuickTips.org   Here we will provide links to great tools and resources along with a video blog of QuickTips for teachers who are trying to incorporate technology into their classrooms. 

ISTE 2012 Rocked!

I just got back from San Diego... I really wish I could have stayed all week!  I have been going to conferences and expos for more than 3 decades but I have never been to a conference that was so packed with useful information.  I was only able to go to three sessions but all three were power packed and full of great ideas and resources.  I feel so enriched from the short weekend. 

I went to seminars on Emerging Technologies in the classroom,  Starting an Online Program, and Grant Writing for your classroom and school.  All three were dynamite and kept us rivited for the 3 hours of each session. 

I can't wait for next year and I have already decided that my wife, a teacher, and I are going to spend the entire week in San Antonio!

PC Maintenance

We have an interesting module to accomplish this week and it had to do with PC Maintenance and Security.  Now I have been in the IT field for 25+ years, but I actually found some information that was interesting to me. 

I was intrigued by three workshops... The first was a module in a software program that I use all the time... Spybot Search & Destroy.  This is a great program for finding and eradicating spyware and malware.  I use the Immunization function and the scan functions.  I have see the Tea Timer function for years and never took the time to investigate what it does.  Tea Timer is a real-time memory and malware scanner.  It watches your front door and warns you if something tries to get in that could be harmful.  Very cool little add-on that I will now use.

The Second workshop that I wandered into was the great tools available on KarenWare.com.  The specific tool that caught my eye was the Replicator.  This little program is basically an automated backup system.  You can specify that a folder or file is backed up at a particular time to either a local drive, network drive or to the cloud somewhere.  You can basically copy your whole My Documents folder to a secure location and then each night the program only updates anything that changed or was added since the last update.  Great little free utility.  As someone who has lost files during a HD crash or a laptop failure, I think this is great protection.

Last utility that I learned about was called MailWasher.  This is a FREE utility that allows you to clean up some or most of the SPAM that hits your inbox every day.  I receive upwards of 200 spam messags a day and I am very glad to utilize this program to help me stop the craziness. 

Three great utilites... I guess you can still teach an old dog new tricks... lol