August 26th, 2011

We just finished our 1st full week in school (with 3 days of classes). As always, the students are great! I am teaching a brand new prep (Adjusted Bio) and am trying to keep up with the work. Bret C and I are both frustrated with the laptop carts. It really is know one's fault - the tech people do a great job of trying to keep our old laptops (6 years old?) running. We just don't have the funds to replace them at this point. Both my wiki and moodle are up and running; I haven't taken advantage of the interactive functionality as of yet on moodle (posting quizzes, having students turn in their work, etc.). We'll see how that goes.

Boot Camp is over!

We just finished day 2 of boot camp. We continued to learn about google apps and their functionalities. We were also able to work in our PLC (professional learning community) to develop our 1st unit. Our goal are to incorporate 21st century skills as well as utilizing some of the technology resources we have been learning about. Our essential question is "What are we made of?" and we are planning on some sort of digestion work as well as a test for summative assessments. We plan on incorporating a google spreadsheet as part of another activity. This is still a work in progress which we will continue to add to next week.

1st Post!

This is the 1st entry in an ongoing reflection about my successes and failures, apprehensions and anticipations, frustrations and satisfactions related to the upcoming school year. I am beginning my 16th year as a science teacher at Upper Arlington High School in Columbus, Ohio. I am currently taking part in a training program that exposes me to a variety of technology tools related to the computer and the internet. In addition, we are receiving training in some of these tools that will enable us to use the internet more effectively and efficiently (both to obtain cogent information and to utilize social media). We have been introduced to RSS feeds, diigo, backnoise, and blogs. We will continue our work together tomorrow and then begin our school year next Monday. I am both excited to continue to learn about these tools, and am somewhat perplexed as to how to be able to implement them appropriately in the classroom. Stay tuned.......