I attended the Texas Computer Educator’s Association Conference a couple of weeks ago. The big  topics were The Cloud, Distance Learning, 1-1 and BYOD. I attended sessions on these and other technology topics.

Cloud computing allows many resources to be stored securely online, allows sharing with controlled access, and frees up server space. Rather than buying more servers and paying for packaged communications and administrative programs schools are looking at  free alternatives and hosted solutions. Hosted means that digital information is stored on a server owned by the service provider and information is accessed over the web. Our Follett Library Software works like this.

Open source technology offers free solutions for information managment needs. Sort of like generics. For example instead of buying Microsoft Office users can download Open Office. Nice thing about that is that it works on both PC and Mac platforms which makes sharing documents easier. Some schools are replacing their Learning Management Systems (LMS)  like Edline with free alternatives like Moodle. Some schools are using free Content Management Systems to expand online course content in conjunction with the commercial grading/communication suites they are already using. Individual classroom teachers can incorporate a suite of tools like Moodle or choose from boutique CMS apps like Collaborize Classroom.  

The two most popular free Content and Learning Management Sysytems (CLMS) are  Google Tools for Education and Moodle. Moodle has matured since it began, tailoring offerings to user need. Schools and educators are active participants in Moodle development. While Moodle requires learning a unique set of skills. Many of us use Google apps every day so using the Google education tools might be quicker to integrate.

Collaborative was one more TCEA buzzword. Teachers are collaborating with colleagues within schools and world wide. Teachers are setting up collaborative opportunities for students. Collaborize Classroom is a free CMS tool teachers are using to do this. If you want to join me in a discussion about online collaborative learning visit my Collaborize Classroom and register to join the discussion. There is a three question poll to get us started. We’ll try a more open ended forum after that. The best way to use these tools is to jump in a try.

And speaking of Google, did you ever think of Googling as a art? Finding information without wading through all those irrelevant hits is an important skill. Here’s the short version of a workshop I attended called The Amazing Art of the Google Search.

There were the usual workshops presenting a dizzying array of free Web 2.0 apps that can be used in the classroom. Rather than trying to summarize all of them, I am passing along this link to Web2.0Guru. Below the Top 20 Web 2.0 Must Haves for Every 21st Century Classroom you’ll find more sites categorized by purpose. Librarians love it when people categorize! Larry Ferlazzo’s blog is another good site to add to your Google Reader.

Google Reader is one of many great Google tools. You can use Google Reader to gather all the online resources you read regularly. If a site has a RSS feed option ( that cool orange button with the white curvy lines) you can click on it and have new articles from that site appear in your Google Reader so all you have to do is log in to your Google account and they are all there for you to read.

Last year at TCEA teaching with GoogleEarth was a hot topic and there was more this year as well. Teachers are using GoogleEarth in all disciplines.  Google Earth Walks was one of the  presentations at TCEA.  Global Trips with Google Earth was another. You do have to download the app to use GoogleEarth. Google does a good job supporting this app with tutorials.

 1-1 was another big idea that got a lot of attention. This means one computer per student. Schools that cannot afford to buy laptops for every student are considering Bring Your Own Device options and writing acceptable use policies that include BYOD. Having students supply their own computer/ipad/iphone, etc. is hotly debated among educators. Does the practice promote inequity? Can school IT professionals support it? What about security? What about software compatibility issues? Here is a slideshow called Balancing Resources and Providing Access for Student Devices that clarifies the debate somewhat.

In the exhibits I was most impressed with two products: Study Island provides 24/7 tutorials and practice tests for SAT, AP, and state-based standards like TEKS and STARR. At the booth I was quoted a package price of $9 per student for a school our size. Another $9 per-student solution I thought was pretty cool was Discipline Manager. It’s a web-based solution that tracks student discipline issues and helps promote consistency in dealing with those issues.

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to attend TCEA. Technology is a moving target. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out there will be an update. Training and practice is critical to success. The unfamiliar becomes familiar when we keep doing it.

I recently sent a link to Apple’s iPad2 education announcement to our faculty. There were comments back and forth until somebody said he heard on TV that this would eventually eliminate teaching positions. Nobody wanted to discuss it after that. It’s a sobering thought, being replaced by a machine. It’s a fear that’s existed since the industrial revolution began. Could that really happen?

Textbooks already identify, gather, and organize content being taught. In many districts lesson plans come from the central office. Teachers use packaged units with media and labs to support and supplement learning. Most schools have a machine in the teacher workroom to grade those bubble-the-answer cards. None of this seems to have eliminated teaching positions. Maybe instead of eliminating teaching positions having students use devices like the iPad2 to gain certain kinds of knowledge will result in same number of teachers being able to offer students deeper, more inspiring learning experiences.

Distance learning already offers any school, no matter how small, the opportunity to offer interested students very specific coursework. I expect this trend to continue and for more uniform vetting processes to be developed for formal online learning experiences. Perhaps fewer teachers will be in the classroom but more teachers will be employed to support distance learning. Predictions are that textbooks on the iPad2 can provide dynamic, interactive learning experiences. Who better than teachers to create these experiences?  Personally, I don’t think we’ll be replacing the teacher with an iPad but we may be transforming the way she teaches and changing where she sits in relation to the student.

Perhaps teachers will prescribe individual learning solutions from a vast online toolkit of teaching resources rather than having to act as sole originator and communicator of knowledge in every instance. Teachers ought to be the people evaluating, selecting, and facilitating access to these resources. Some teachers will learn to use iBooks Author and other online templates and programming platforms so that they become content creators as well as content facilitators.

Perhaps iPads will increase  options for how a student can attain knowledge so classroom teachers have time to do the kinds of personalized assessments of student learning that only a teacher can do. Maybe he’ll finally have time to really edit that essay or examine that problem and think about how that one individual student is processing information. Perhaps students and teachers will spend less time with the mechanics of conveying information so that time together can be true pedagogy and actual mentoring.

The most intellectually stimulating application can’t have a relationship with a student. Computers cannot mentor. Machines have no ethics or moral code. Ipads don’t have spirits. It is through relationships that we learn to assign value and make judgments about the information we receive. It takes the guidance of another human being to be able to put information into perspective. Life skills can only be taught by those who have experienced life. Only people can be creative, passionate and compassionate. And while Skype is a boon for human communication, there is an intangible spiritual connection that happens when people are learning together in the same room. Some knowledge takes root through synergy.

Information may be available anywhere, anytime. So, yes, it might be possible to replace the physical classroom teacher with an approximate technology substitute for some kinds of learning. But it takes a relationship with a teacher for a student to learn to deal wisely with information and harness the energy contained in knowledge.

The real issue is not whether the iPad2 will replace teachers, it’s whether schools are willing to put up the money to pay for both. More iPad2′s with fewer teachers is likely to result in kids with lots of information but little wisdom. Skipping the iPads and continuing on our current course may not show wisdom either.  That would depend on whether or not you think what we are doing now is preparing our kids and enabling our teachers to be fully functional, influential citizens of the 21st century. 

A Spectrum of opinions – article I recommend to gain more perspective:

Burns, Matt. iPads and Digital Textbooks do not belong in Classrooms Yet. 19 Jan 2012.

Carmody, Tim. What’s Wrong with Education Cannot be Fixed with Technology. Wired. 17 Jan. 2012.

Cooper, Daniel. Apple Launches iBook 2 e-Textbook platform. Engadget Blog. 12 Jan 2012.

Day, Lori. The iPad2 for Schools: Effect on Education and the Great Divide. Funderstanding Blog.

Heather, Brian. Apple’s Education Announcement: What You Need to Know. Engadget Blog. 19 Jan. 2012.

Jewell, Andrew. The Times They are a changing. What Did You Do at School Today? blog. 23 Jan. 2012.

Kumparak, Greg. Of Course iPads Belong in the Classroom – It’s All About Balance. Techcrunch. 19 Jan. 2012.

Ledesma, Patrick. Apple and  iPad’s Potential Game Changer for Education. Education Week. 19 Jan 2012.

McCrea, Bridget. Measuring iPad’s Potential for Education. The Journal. 27 Jan 2012.

Spoonauer, Mark. 5 Reasons iBooks2 Naysayers are wrong. Laptop. 20 Jan 2012.

Summer, Aaron. How the iPad2 and Education could go together. Stratepedia Blog. 4 Mar. 2011.

Ulanoff, Lance. This is How Apple Changes Education Forever. Mashable Tech. 19 Jan. 2012

I haven’t posted anything to this blog since May. Summer could be called a hiatus. August and September have been a season of attitude adjustment. Every once in awhile my attitude toward change needs a hard reset. The cheese keeps moving. I am surrendering my resistance to change. I will follow the cheese. I have identified six technology goals that I think may need to precede my actual acquisition of new skills. I will be working on these all year. I will probably be working on them the rest of my life.
continue reading "My Technology Manifesto"

To Facebook or not to Facebook

According to a recent Edudemic Article 91% of college professors use Facebook  and 80% use their pages for some aspect of instruction. Only 47% of employees in other industries do this. Apparently students who have already used social media as part of their educational experiences will have a leg up in college. Whether this will translate to the working world is debatable.

Concern about protecting one’s reputation on Facebook is valid. Facebook Friending 101 for Schools  discusses some of the reputation issues associated with using Facebook. There is an account of how one school managed a case of Cyberbullying . Davis also discusses how friending has the potential for students and teachers to become “human hyperlinks” for Facebook “creepers.” She outlines how to use settings in Facebook to limit what various kinds of friends can see. This feature allows users to differentiate between friends, friends-of-friends, co-workers, family, etc.  and to control access to content by the various categories of friends, at least on our end. We still have to be vigilant about deleting unwanted posts and tags that other people associate with our names. Grammar snobs beware: author Vicki Davis, while very knowledgeable about her topic, could use a proofreader. (I must be a little bit of a grammar snob since I felt compelled to include this alert.)

Facebook maintenance does take some time but opting out may not be the answer either. Read Suzi Nestico’s about Why Teachers Need Digital Citizenship in which she encourages teachers to create Facebook pages and model digital citizenship for their students. Used well, Facebook is an important communication tool. It has the potential to promote community and extend our spheres of influence with our students. Bottom line: if you are going to Facebook, Facebook responsibly.

 A Geek Out About Cutting Edge Learning Analytics

What we post and share on social networking sites like Facebook along with other online activity like the sites we visit, how we search for data, what we bookmark, what we post and repost, tweet and retweet are all part of our electronic intellectual footprint. Learning Analytics is the study of these data trails in order to optimize learning.  The ability to create a learning profile for students based on this data has the potential to help teachers and educational institutions become more nimble in adapting curriculum to student learning needs and styles.

Students can already run online analysis on their SAT test results. Classroom clicker technology like Qwizdom does analytics based on student responses. Amazon keeps a record of what we buy and what we search in order to make recommendations. These are isolated examples of how our data trails provide information that identify trends and gaps in learning.  Imagine a technology that pulls together and analyzes all of this data about each student in order to assess learning and prescribe a learning plan that meets that student’s individual learning needs. Imagine a technology that can identify the most pervasive learning processes and tailors resources to adapt to those processes.

Canadian social media researcher George Siemens  defines Learning Analytics as “the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data about learners and their context for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs.” Siemens is running the first Leaning Analytics Knowledge Conference  will be held in Banff, Alberta, Canada this summer. His article at Elearnspace explains how this data can predict student success, be used to establish prior knowledge, and prescribe personalized learning plans to help students reach learning goals.

Learning Analytics is one of the key trends identified by the Horizon Report . It’s expected to mature as a field of study and become practicable in four to five years. While the report says that learning analytics has the potential to transform pedagogy it also lists issues like privacy concerns, profiling, and IT challenges like reconciling disparate types of data as challenges to using to the developing technology. Learning Analytics has the potential to provide deeper analysis for assessment and allow for real time adaptation of instruction to individual learner’s needs.

While I find this sort of thing theoretically cool, I do have some reservations about privacy. I also find myself wondering how students who become used to learning experiences that automatically adapting to their personal needs and styles will do when they reach a work environment that expects them to be the ones doing the adapting.

 Cool sites to peruse and use

 Over on the Free Technology for Teachers site Richard Byrne lists links for SAT, AP, and GRE vocabulary phone aps.

You Tube has launched Copyright School, an instructional video that they will require copyright violators that they catch illegally using You Tube videos to view. It guess it’s inevitable that the Information Highway would eventually require traffic cops, tickets, and driving schools.

Learn it in 5 is a site with 5 minute instructional videos. This one shows How to Use You Tube in the Classroom. Videos for teachers include how to make an instructional video, classroom blogging, and wikis for teachers. For students there are 5 minute videos on all sorts of topics. In math there’s a Multiplication Rap for elementary students and a Top 10 Algebra Mistakes for upper grades. There are videos on Atoms, the Emancipation Proclamantion, Metaphros, and Making using with iPads. All are teacher and/or student produced.

NASA Rocket web quest for Physics students

No Sweat Shakespeare  includes links to an extensive collection of links to Shakespeare resources, a blog with a collection of articles from various Shakespeare resources, and original content  about Shakespeare’s life and work. The site belongs to Warren King, a Shakespeare educator from the UK.

Here are links to articles and videos that might prove helping in teaching about the U.S. Military operation that killed Osama bin Laden May 1, 2011.

President Obama announces death of Osama bin Laden - Washington Post

Details from the Raid - Atlantic Wire

More Details on the Raid – Reuters

Phone Call by Kuwaiti courier led to bin Laden – AP

Footage Inside Compound - ABC News

About Joint Special Operations Command – National Journal

DNA Match Confirms Death – CNN

President Praises Anonymous Heroes who killed bin Laden – ABC

BBC Categorized Coverage – BBC

Timeline of Osama bin Laden’s Terrorist Activities – Herald Sun

Pictorial timeline of bin Laden’s terrorist activity - Boston.com

Osama bin Laden and Al Quaeda’s Place in History – BBC

Jihad’s Reaction - Reuters

Did Pakistan know where bin Laden was hiding?  - Washington Post

Political Fallout for Pakistan – Guardian – UK

U.S. Stocks Rise in Reaction – Smart Money

Effect of Oil prices – AP

What Travellers Can Expect – Portfolio.com – Bizjournals

Concerns about Al Quaeda revenge – AP

Backstory – Back in 2008 Larry Ferlazzo posted Best sites to teach about 9/11. Revisiting some of these might help a generation of students who are too young to remember 9/11.

Tidbits:

Tweets from Sohabib Athar, an IT guy in Abbotabad who heard helicopters and unwittingly tweeted the raid as it happened. He is apparently not enjoying his 15 minutes of fame and responded to calls from reporters with “I didn’t kill him, let me sleep.”

Swedish site Ogle Earth explains why it’s so difficult to pinpoint the location of bin Laden’s compound on Google maps. People have been trying since the raid but apparently Google maps has two satellite images, one taken in 2001 before the compound was built and another taken in 2005. Different images have been posted by everyone from bloggers to new sources.

Event planning and coordination can involve myriad back and forth emails and phone calls. Several Web 2.0 applications may help with this. Which date works? Participants mark a calendar to indicate which dates they are available and which dates absolutely will not work. 

Doodle takes a polling approach in which you can send out possible dates and have participants vote on the best one.

MyPunchbowl is a free event planning application that offers a full suite of party planning features including a poll-style date decider. Punchbowl also offers a save the date feature and invitation designer. It’s possible to import email addresses, upload maps, and post invitations onto Facebook and Twitter. Punchbowl can automatically send out reminders to attendees. Attendees can sign up for potluck items and discuss each event on an event message board. Event planners can post a to-do list and check off each item as it is completed. There is a gift registry linked to Amazon’s wish list. There is a zip-code specific venue finder and a vendor registry.  After the event attendees can post messages and upload pictures & videos to the “after party” site.  My Punchbowl looks like it could be a valuable coordination tool for clubs, organizations, parent teacher fellowships, church small groups, and other groups that need to coordinate efforts and schedule meetings. I’m currently using it with my family and friends to plan an Easter celebration.

Ice breaker tags offers a template for printing name tags with icebreaker questions. It provides the option of uploading an organization’s logo as well. There is a link to a Flickr pool with some different nametag icebreaker ideas. The traditional game involves placing the name of a famous person on the name tag and placing on the back of each person in attendance. Attendees must ask other people questions and try to guess the name of the person on his or her back. This not only makes a great event activity but work as a classroom starter as well. Students may represent themselves as literary and biographical personalities, even chemical elements.

 And speaking of chemical elements, here are 5 periodic tables games.

Graphics are a powerful way to communication data. IBM offers Many Eyes, a free collection of data visualizations, which are charts, graphs, maps, and other graphics used to communicate data. Users can use an existing graphic or upload their own data and select the way they want it visualized. I found the visualization options page particularly instructive. It’s a great way to help students understand what kind of graphic is most appropriate for different kinds of data analysis. The Data and Format Style provided directions on how to set up data on a spreadsheet. Depending on the type of visualization desired data can be cut and pasted into Many Eyes from spreadsheets, tab-delimited text files, word documents, and text files. The small light blue print on gray background made the whole site a little hard to read but the site offers an option of adjusting the settings to provide for better visibility.

American History Demographics from 1790 – 2010 contains dozens of data visualizations on that subject.

Edudemic posted an article on Digital Textbooks. Some advantages are that digital textbooks never go out of date, a laptop or electronic notebook weighs significantly less than a backpack full of textbooks, and the cost over time is less since it’s less expensive to update electronic content than it is to produce a new print edition. One would expect there would be significant environmental impact as well. All those obsolete textbooks have to go somewhere.  

Students are able to more easily integrate learning from ebooks, digital textbooks, and online resources. Integrating formal educational resources with personal learning and communication on one device might ultimately help students decompartmentalize classroom experiences and life experiences. I have a theory that early reliance on electronic devices for information and education as well as for communication and entertainment seems more likely to result in a generation of adults who are life-long learners as they continue to use their personal electronic devices as personal learning systems. What do you think about that theory?

Symbaloo.EDU is a Personal Learning Environment that allows individuals to store and sort web resources for educational use. I’m thinking of shifting all our Delicious bookmarks and all the bookmarks on our current library web page over to Symbaloo. Students and individual teachers can have free accounts.  It offers class and library memberships for $35. Bookmarks can be sorted into “web mixes” that correspond to individual classes, units, or projects so that an individual unit or individual assignment can have its own web mix. It’s easy to add to the mix. Individual teachers and students can have their own free SymbalooEDU accounts. Those accounts can be linked to the library or class accounts so resources and webmixes intended for class use are shared. Individuals can also add links to completed projects so that Symbaloo works like an online portfolio.

Show YouTube videos without potential embarrassment using  ViewPure.  There are some fabulous YouTube videos out there which may, unfortunately, be accompanied by inappropriate comments or followed by ads for the next video which may not be classroom-friendly. ViewPure is a free application that makes it possible to attach or imbed YouTube videos without the extras.

Stick Figure Simplicity. Common Craft offers really simple videos you can show online for free. You can imbed these into lessons and powerpoints for a fee of $20 for 3 years. These provide simple explanations for basic technology and economic concepts. 

Try BitLy if it’s taking too long for students to type in a long URL for a class project. You can shorten the url and make it simpler to get everybody on the same page. TinyURL is another resource for doing this.

An EasyBib Hint. It’s been around for years, but in case you missed it,  Easybib  is a great tool that creates correctly formatted bibliographies. But it isn’t always that easy. One issue that arises at research paper time is that students find sources that publish reprints of previously published works. Students must credit both the original source and the work where the reprint appears. To do this on Easybib  click “All 58 options” then choose “Collection Article.” There are blanks to supply bibliographic information for the original and the source where the article is reprinted. Please remind your students that content created by others nees to be properly credited.

I finally did another training with our now not-so-new Qwizdom Classroom Response System. We can use Qwizdom to test students. According to the traininer we can export results to Grade Quick by saving the results onto an Excel document then exporting the Excel document into Grade Quick. In addition to using Qwizdom for testing we can do anonymous polls, create a Jeopardy-like game for reviews. It also has a car race game in which students compete by answering questions correctly. It can also be used with PowerPoints with students answering questions using clickers. Qwizdom also offers online access to prepared resources that can be linked to state curriculum standards. Qwizdom works for T/F and Multiple Choice Questions.

Finally, I could not resist sharing this funny from Edudemic: What if Social Media was a high school ? 

I spent part of spring break on organization and storage. I rearranged, pared down, sorted, filed and discarded. I realize this sounds like work to many people, but I find this sort of thing  fun. Now that my physical world is in order it’s time to tackle my virtual world. As many hours as I spend at the computer I tend to ignore the virtual clutter,  but lately I find myself spending way too much time looking for a particular email or trying to remember what I named a document.

Virtual Spring Cleaning - Here’s my plan:

1. Create folders in “My documents” for each teaching unit, task or function. The goal is to get all Powerpoints, Exel and Word documents that pertain to the same task into one folder together and to reduce the number of lone documents cluttering up the desktop or “My documents” folder (It bothers me that I am putting folders in a folder. Microsoft should have called me in to consult. I would have told them to call those folders that they named ”My documents” and “My pictures”  ”File drawers” rather than folders.)
2. Save a copy of each document that I might need to access outside work to Google.doc, organized, of course, into folders with the same names I am using at work.
3. Create folders for email using the same headings. Add folders for various types of communication like administrative, employment, parent.
4. Create a personal calendar in outlook. Put dates for events communicated via emails on the calendar immediately. Copy and paste the details from the email right into the field that appears after double clicking on the date.
5. Sign up for Google Reader or another RSS feed reader for online newspapers, periodicals and blogs that I read frequently. This puts all the articles in one place to read now, read later, star, forward, etc. Here’s an article from FreeTech4Teachers that does a good job explaining the benefits of RSS Feed Readers :

Quick Devos Online. While we’re talking about RSS, some of you have told me that you forward the devotionals that I send out every morning via school email. You may not know that I write these every day including weekends and holidays and post them on the web. Anyone can read them online or subscribe to the RSS feed at Quick Spiritual Reset rather than waiting for you to forward the email.

Timely Topics: Japan – Edudemic posted 100+ teaching tools for Japan’s Tsunami.

Free Online Math Tutor Khan Academy is a collection of 1400 videos that explain mathematical, economic, and science concepts and walk students through mathematical processes. There are also 100 self paced exercises. Some would be excellent tools to post on Edline as supplemental resources. Amazing as it may sound, online tutor Sal Kahn is the sole producer of all this free material.

Free Collaborative Learning Tool. Sophia allows you to post multimedia learning packets or use packets other teachers have posted for assignments or tutorials. Students complete the packets online. You can also form private online study groups where students can work on content together, post questions & answers, and discuss assignments.

America on the Move: Forbes published a powerful visual Map: Where Americans are Moving that shows the movement of the population of the U.S. from county to county based on data from the IRS. Open the  map and click on Travis, Williamson and Hays counties.

Here are some sites I found this week that might be helpful. I’ve noted at the end of each entry whether the site is aimed at E Elementary, MS Middle School, or HS High School.  Please feel free to post any of your favorite sites in the comments section of this site.

Social Studies – The BBC has produced a map of the Middle East. Click on any country and see a quick overview of political demographic information. The Economist has calculated an “unrest index” for each country. MS HS

Science – The molecular workbench is a free, open-source tool that offers visual, interactive simulations for teaching and learning science and engineering. Users can use existing simulations or create and share their own. You have to install Java on your computer to use it. HS

Language Arts – Google partners with Weekly Reader to publish a series of tutorials and handouts with ideas for using Google.docs to  teach the revision process in writing. This is just one of many Google tools that can be used in the classroom. E MS HS

Foreign Language – Forvo offers almost a million words pronounced by native speakers in 30 languages. E MS HS

All disciplines - Here’s an idea for creating a fake Facebook page for a historical or literary figure that was posted on Richard Byrne’s Free Technology for Teachers blog. This idea might even extend into the sciences. Student could create a fake Facebook page for something inanimate like a chemical element. The possibilities are endless. MS HS

All disciplines –  New York’s School of the Future shares some Free Resources and Tools for Authentic Assessment over at the Edutopia blog. There are some rubrics and assessment tools that can be used for student self-assessment as well as teacher assessment. E MS HS

This week I did some playing, some listening, some thinking, and some tinkering…well, I mostly watched the tinkering. Here are my favorite free  finds online this week:

 Magnetic  Poetry for Kids is a site that invites elementary students to write poetry and play with words.  It works just like the magetic poetry magnets that go on the fridge. Students can save and share their finished poetry. Wordsmiths will find this seriously addictive. Students who may be hesitant to write may find it easier to manipulate the words and phrases supplied by the game.

Numbers at Play is a collection of Ted Talks from scientists and engineers on everything from Calculus in Architecture to the Mathematics of War. Speakers present some fascinating ideas in the world of mathematics that may inspire  upper level high school students to think about how the problems they are solving in class connect to the world around them. Teaching students the art of engaged listening may be one the best preparations for college that we can provide them. Ted Talks is a nonprofit collection of open source talks, interviews and performances on different topics that expose us to engaging thinkers in different fields of knowledge. I listen to a couple of lectures a week just for fun.

Seth Godin is a popular writer, entrepreneur and speaker. His blog has become a daily read for me. While much of his writing applies to business and marketing, the thoughts on his blog are often universal. He challenges me to think critically about myself as a contributor not only in my job but in all the communities to which I belong. Godin is one of the minds behind Squidoo, a site for creating and launching free web pages.           

namebench can speed up your web browser.  Warning: skip this entry or pass it along to your techno-whiz friends if you find words like “DNS server” and “tcddump output” the least bit intimidating. My husband is the true computer geek in the family and set this up at home for us. It really is faster. This may not work on a networked computer and you should check with your IT department before doing this on a school computer. Namebench  hunts down the fastest DNS servers available for your computer to use. Namebench runs a fair and thorough benchmark using your web browser history, tcpdump output, or standardized datasets in order to provide an individualized recommendation. namebench is completely free. Go to downloads and get the version for your operating system, install and run namebench (we left all the defaults). Then change the DNS settings on your home router to what they tell you. We got a 28% faster DNS server which means faster web surfing. It’s not a really user friendly app, if you are on a PC,  Gibson Research has a similar tool called DNS Benchmark .