BYOD- one of the top 10 Ed Tech stories of 2011

This year, BYOD landed amongst the top 10 stories in Ed Tech for 2011, according to eSchool News. As our first semester with BYOD comes to a close, I find it interesting to look at others perspectives on this trend, which is helping districts across the country save money on technology equipment. You can find the eSchool news summary of the topic at http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/12/15/the-10-biggest-ed-tech-stories-of-2011/10/? It talks about the classroom management issue as well as other struggles that teachers and districts face when implementing this new paradigm. Also intereesting in this article is that it sites results from the Project Speak Up Survey, which we are asking our staff, students, parents, and administrators to take...

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Flipping Your Classroom

Classroom Flipping is a hot topic these days, and it is a really cool concept. The idea is this, instead of teaching a lesson at school, and sending kids home to practice by doing homework exercises, you do the opposite. You send the kids home to watch a lesson (usually a video, screen recording or tutorial) and then the kids come to class to do the practice exercises. This completely changes the way a classroom looks. Instead of seeing teachers in front of the classroom lecturing, you see teachers walking around and helping students on a more individualized basis. Teachers can create lessons for students in may ways. Here in Frisco, we have screen capture software that will record your voice and actions. Interwrite does that for us (there...

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Google Stock Photos

One of the things that has, in the past, made Google Docs a little more of a challenge to use, has been the lack of a clipart feature. We have become so dependent upon clipart that it is difficult to reconcile the fact that we must go out on the web and find our own images for insertion into our documents. Enter Google Stock Photo! Now, if you open a document and choose to insert an image, one of your choices is to choose an image from Google Stock Photo. In the image above, I searched for the term "baby" (I guess I have babies on the brain!) and found lots of cute results. No longer are you completely dependent upon finding your own imagery for your site, blog, or document! Knowing Google, this repository will...

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Google: Now a Graphing Calculator!

You may or may not be aware, but Google is more than a search engine. There are lots of interesting things that can happen in Google if you know how to word your query. For example, you can track a package by entering UPS, Fedex or USPS package tracking numbers into the search box. Enter something like 10.5 cm in inches and Google will do the conversion.  And, in the past, if you treated the search box like a calculator screen, it would give you the answer! But now Google has taken it a step further and added the graphing calculator functionality. Here is a screenshot of three graphs I plotted at once. Pretty neat! Oh, and did you like all that other stuff you can use Google search for? For more on cool search features...

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Facebook- a place in the classroom?

Many educators have strong opinions with regards to Facebook. Either they fall in the "Don't Do IT" camp or they embrace it wholeheartedly. Whichever your stance, you should check out the list of 5 Best Practices for Teachers from Mashable. By the way, did you know that there are FISD related Facebook pages out there? There is a page for Pioneer Heritage Middle School, and a page for FriscoISD Libraries to name just a couple. The advanced Marketing students at CTE have also created a Facebook page as part of their ad campaign to end cyberbullying. Have you ever considered using Facebook in class? Well, it is blocked by our filters, but a little creativity goes a long way here. Why not make a fake Facebook page? Make a page for...

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