Jun
22
2009
Blogging has become so common that it is nearly impossible to keep up with the blogs that may pique your interest. I subscribe to RSS feeds of some of those that interest me, and yet I still have difficulty reading all the few subscriptions. On the whole, I try to keep up with ITRT blogs and news feeds, but that is impossible. There are just too many sources of information to begin to read them all, so I just pick and choose and few, occasionally adding a new source.
This week I am presenting blogging to the Library Media Specialists in Virginia Beach. My goal is to cover the basics in 2 hours and have each participant leave with a “work in progress.” As I reviewed the procedure for establishing a blog, I was reminded that it takes very little to actually have a blog up and running; other technical people have done most of the work. Basically, you need to sign up, sign in, make a title and post your first article. VOILA! You have a blog!
Reviewing the procedure over the course of the last two weeks, I am reminded that there are many links on a blog that seem very similar and some that you really do not need to use or even visit on a regular basis. It is, however, fun to make the blog your own – adding pictures, backgrounds, Voki’s, and widgets. With time, we’ll explore some of what makes each blog unique.
Jun
14
2009
As a parent and an educator, I am outraged at the lack of common sense exhibited by the Virginia Department of Education in its refusal to grant a waiver to the SOL requirements to Ms. Lauren Cootes at Frank W. Cox High School in Virginia Beach. Please read the following article if you are unaware of the situation involving her illness and inability to take an SOL test. “Give the girl her diploma.” Does anyone at VDOE have any common sense? Is there no compassion in Richmond? What in the world is wrong with educated people in power that they have no ability to use common sense in an exceptional situation?
Congratulations to Kerry Dougherty of the Virginian-Pilot for shedding light on this travesty. SOL standards have been established to ensure that our graduating seniors have a minimum amount of knowledge as they leave our high schools; certainly this is not the case here. I have asked the governor to please “use [his] influence to overturn the decision made by some idiot in the Virginia Department of Education. Failure to graduate Lauren Cootes from Frank W. Cox High School would be a mockery of what we in education expect of our students.”
Jun
14
2009
It is a busy time of year for all of us in education; but it is difficult to believe that it has been almost a month since my last post. The last weeks have been filled with a variety of activities including:
prepping for SOL tests and enduring the testing process (ongoing, as we are in the midst of expedited testing);
identifying, moving, and surveying 56 old computers, cleaning up the tables for the new ones; receiving the new computers, getting them to the proper locations, and continuing to set them up — they arrived with Office 2003, so now they need 2007 installed on all of them;
coordinating the Awards Assembly for our student body, fortunately with a co-chair and a great committee;
and finally, preparing for the new Renaissance Academy with new orders arriving almost daily, where each box must be opened, verified, resealed, and put in storage, and working on the Web site for the new school.
Developing the Web site reminded me of ways to integrate technology. The new Web site has an embedded Animoto short video of pictures taken with my Blackberry Storm after a tour of the new building under construction; free technology online is engaging — capture the attention of your students with a short Animoto video to introduce a lesson! One of the treasures here is the ability to integrate technology with little work or time involved on your part; or better yet, have your students take the pictures and create the video! I also worked with the new Renaissance Academy logo in FireWorks 8, a powerful program for editing graphics; our school has a site license of an older version, which is still very powerful.
