Let me start this rant with a positive example of how the Accelerated Reading Program is used at some school sites. I’m thinking of the 5th grade teacher who is starting a unit on the American Revolution and is seeking historical fiction and biographies to supplement the history textbook.  The school librarian has used AR’s [...]

Just made a big step forward on my commitment to “get” SmartBoards by visiting Tom Barrett’s Idea’s to Inspire site!  Each page on the site has a slideshow on a specific tool. I started with his Interesting Ways to Use ICT in Your Classroom tab, where I was thrilled to discover 38 Interesting Ways to [...]

Interactive whiteboards, such as Promethean and Smartboard, are an expensive investment (about $1,200 each). When writing my EETT grant, I did not build them into the budget.  What I did purchase was a laptop and LCD projector per teacher (starting with 4th grade this year; 5th grade next year), plus headset and stand-alone microphone, voice [...]

Walked away with another round of immediately useful resources and ideas from Friday’s workshops: iPhone: The Ultimate Teaching Assistant – Lanie McGann provided a great overview of iPhone uses and applications via her presentations and iPhone Education PDF. She ended her session by polling the audience for favorite iPhone apps.  Haven’t had a chance to [...]

I made two great discoveries during Thursday’s CUE sessions: Super Google – The Advanced Research Machine – Loved this session by Jeremy Davis!  No need to summarize all the gems he shared because he’s posted them to his Virtual Technology Teacher site. Looking for video tutorials on Google to share with your teachers? Look no [...]

Due to very iffy wifi connections, I was not able to do much live blogging from CUE (although I did Tweet much of the conference). Here are a few of the gems from  the Wednesday pre-Cue EdubloggerCon-West meet up (Thank you, Steve Hargadon, for putting together this event!) Jose Rodriguez – How do you get [...]

http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/

Sixty years after the fact, I just finished reading the reprint of a lead story that “captures the excitement which must have been felt by Oakland Tribune reporter Ray Haywood as he witnessed the historic event and later recorded it on his typewriter”: Casey Stengel and the Oakland Oaks’ first pennant in 21 years! It [...]