Class Blog writting
Today we’re having our Critical Thinking class students writing some blog posts about their vacations. This is a class taught in collaboration with Eddy Jones and later on in the year Dianne Gamage will be joining us. I think it makes sense I model what I teach them. In this case we’re having them write about a moment in their summer vacation. So my next post after this one will be just that.
Cheers,
Brian
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Admin Tool Box
Just started TCNJ class EDAD 525 Introduction to Educational Administration taught by Ellis Milton . All week we’ll be working on this Admin Tool Box. This is what we have so far:
Admin Tool Box
- Bookmark Ellis “Meeting Resource & Handouts“
- Give up some “Air Time”
- Ask follow up questions: Tell more about, Help me understand, What the best thing you learned, Paraphrased
- Make, Post, use Org Chart
- Every document has a Dev date, Revised Date, update date: a wiki can accomplishes this automatically
- Most documents are public, a wiki can make this simple to do
- I don’t know that, I’m open to new ideas
- More dialog, less discussion
- Think - pair -share
- Sharpen the saw
- Admit problems
- Develop responsibility, ownership
- Post-it note consensus
- If you going to have a bad meeting minus well not have it
“Prepare More ….. Meet less!”
“Time spent on agenda building returns hundred-fold”
“Agenda items should be detailed” - 6 minute AB fluency review (A person speak on a topic for 1 minute, B person continues on the same topic and expands for another minute)
- Have a Survey before a meeting
- Someone that is against something. Ask: is this a Deep Belief or Personal Preference
- Ask for sabotage Ideas
- “Walking around” management, three minute walk through
- Five Finger Survey reference
A Lazy writer writes
Almost two months and I haven’t posted anything. Well it’s better to write a little bit than nothing. At this point in time, I’m taking a Law and Education class through TCNJ global studies course . It’s a interesting class as little or no technology is used. It’s a bit like an outward bound course for me. Just yesterday power cut out but it’s wasn’t a big deal, with the AC off it warmed up a bit but the class went on. Wireless at the school is a bit weak but an airport express plugged into their LAN has fixed the issue for our class. The school uses a proxy so I’m now learning how to route other port traffic through it. So far only web browsers and twhirl work. No luck with mail or Firstclass, I’m guessing they’ve blocked smtp traffic 
Technology & Learning
How is technology improving student learning? It’s an excellent question asked by my twitter colleague Andrew. It turns out there are more questions, than answers from this query.
Sadly, it seems it isn’t a question that comes up until after a school has made large investments in technology. Not to say no one is asking these questions, it’s just a minority view point. In a metaphor technology is like paper and pencils. Do we ask “How are pencils and paper improving learning?” and if you are. What are your answers?
Uncategorized | Comment (1)Animoto + ASIJ + JASCD
Before I posted a reflection from Saturdays workshop, first I’d like to show this Animoto video. In it, is the adventure of traveling from YIS to ASIJ, switching between buses & trains and a few pictures from some of the sessions. On reflection I wish I had uStreamed the workshop, but there is always next year.
I have no clue what the words to the song are. I’m just hoping it fits in, if not, it might be one of those items lost in translation.
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Are Web 2.0 sites Electronic Portfolios friendly?
This Post is for the Weekend Workshop happening at ASIJ on April 26, 2008
We will be exposed to several different websites, each with a unique purpose, all are platform independent, working on both Macs and Windows computers. We’ll look at a school which has Electronic Portfolio system in place. Preview some different services and also look at some neat new organizational tools
Once the preview is completed, each will pick a favorite, explore and try it out. We end the session discussing discoveries or disappointments.
Sharing & Beyond
Twitter is a mirco blogging platform. It’s one of the main tools used in researching this workshop. It’s a great tool for continueing our learning on this topic. Create an account and following many of the educators listed on my twitter account. My link is this http://www.twitter.com/brianlockwood
…and twhirl is a free application for keeping your tweets up to date.
E-Portfolio Example
Shanghai American School uses Wordpress MU for student blogs, a few weeks ago students presented their E-portfolios to their parents.
Framework
Video, Collaboration & Graphics
Animoto is a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos. Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music.
Here’s an example of a thread used in a Kindergarten Classroom
and here’s a demo example of how to use it. School’s have free and protected access to all of VoiceThread’s feature sets.
Neat tools but…. why would I use them?
Evernote and my shared notes and some other shared notes from one of our History teachers
GetDropBox is not in beta, we’re limited to watching this informational video.
Hello world!
I deleted the default message that comes with this account and I am typing something quick and short. I’m in a prepping stage, trying to ready myself for a digital portfolio workshop at ASIJ on April 26th. Wish me luck.
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