TechieTeacher5280

Our school district recently deployed laptops to all freshmen at two different high schools. In order to help support our teachers successfully use the laptops, our team of TechTrainers has been spending lots of time in the buildings helping students and teachers with their new laptops. While visiting a teacher's classroom, I heard her telling students that their work was due electronically by 7:30 the next morning. She told them that she would not accept late work for any reason, so they better not leave things to the last minute, lest their Internet connection crash or some other disaster strike. I asked her later what she would do if she received a corrupted document. In that case, she told me, she would allow the student to fix the issue and resubmit the assignment. Seems fair, right?

This year I'm teaching a new class, an advanced technology class for 7th graders. In our district, we do not have curriculum for technology classes, so I get to create all the projects my students will work on. I love coming up with new ideas, so I was very excited to have the opportunity to plan for a new class. This class has the added challenge of being marketed as "advanced" but does not have any prerequisites, so my students may come to me with very little computer experience. As a result, I decided to come up with projects that ultimately require a lot of different skills, but are broken down into mini-assignments to be more manageable for my students. My favorite assignment for this class involves Claymation. Through this project, students learn how to use Microsoft Word, Windows Movie Maker, wikis, discussion boards, digital cameras, tripods, and microphones to record sounds on the computer. The students have really enjoyed this project and have created some gre...

This week has been a tough week for me. My grandmother, who I'm extremely close to, passed away on Wednesday. Her health had been declining for quite some time, however, after having a wonderful visit with her on Saturday, I never expected that the next day she would slip into unconsciousness and remain that way until finally passing away on Wednesday. I learned of her condition after school on Monday and immediately rushed over to her nursing home to be with her. I took the rest of the week off to keep her company and then to be with my family after she passed. As I had not anticipated being out from work for so long (or at all really), I was not at a good point in my projects for a sub to step in and take over. Of course, most of my classes finished their work my first day out. As I did not know what type of computer skills my sub would have, or even if I would get the same one each day, I needed to write lesson plans that were simple enough for a non tech-savvy person to...

If you ever wanted to know how to make your own Talking Head animated clip like the folks at JibJab do ( http://sendables.jibjab.com/ ), check out this great video tutorial series I recently found! http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=e520a Kim Cavanaugh has put together a series of 5 short video tutorials that show you how to create your own talking head using Flash & Fireworks. Better still you can download the videos to your computer in case you want to show them to your students but find the website blocked by your district! I hope you enjoy this amazing resource as much as I do!

It was suggested to me that I start a tech blog for teachers, since I spend most of my free time looking for resources and complaining that there aren't enough. Why not create my own resource for teachers? Why not, indeed! I'm a full time technology teacher at a middle school in Colorado, which keeps me pretty busy, but I hope to start posting my thoughts/ideas regularly so that others might find some of the great resources I've discovered over the years. Enjoy!