Today we assembled as a faculty to kick-off the 2008-2009 academic year. This is an exciting day, especially for those of us who work most of the year, as old faculty return with tales of adventures from the previous ten weeks and we welcome in the new members of the teaching community at school. Like many schools, we begin the year highlighting the themes and topics that we will address for the upcoming year. Last year, the school created a new strategic plan which outlined the areas of exploration for us for the upcoming year. There are three areas of […]
Category: teaching and learning
Innovation and my Google Teacher Academy Application
This morning, I submitted my Google Teacher Academy application. The application process was fairly straight forward, with the exception of the need to create a one minute video on one of the following topics, either Motivation and Learning or Classroom Innovation. This was the daunting part of the task, especially since I on August 11th, which coincided with the back to school rush. I had two weeks to figure out what my message should be, while at the same time I was having to create the variety of new accounts for each of the six virtual componenets of our North […]
Riding the Wave
It has been six weeks since I have posted my last reflective post. During those six weeks, I have attended NECC, the Laptop Institute at the Laussanne Collegiate School in Memphis, and a workshop given by Darren Kuropatwa at the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School. At the end of these travels, I needed to back away from the immediacy of Twitter and time I need to create a post to spend both me time and family time. I have been busy getting ready for the challenges of the upcoming school year. Over the next few weeks, it […]
The Great Conversations That Occur When The Bells Don’t Ring
There are several reasons that I love working during the summers. Part of the appeal is that the weather is still nice and there is still plenty of daylight left when I go home, so that I can still enjoy outdoor activities. I also appreciate the pace of the day, especially when the bells are not ringing every 45 minutes, often denoting the need to change the task that I am doing. I am able to immerse and become engaged in flow if the mood strikes. What I really enjoy is the conversations that I am able to have with […]
The Bump in the Road – 13 Days Project
As all technology projects go, the 13 Days Project has not been without its bumps. The project is due tomorrow, Wednesday, May 28 at 10:00 a.m. This morning, we were having problems uploading the PhotoStory projects, created for playback in on a computer in .wmv format to upload into VoiceThread. Digging around the VoiceThread help (FAQs and forums), I could not find a solution. So I turned to my del.icio.us network. Using the search terms “wmv” and “flv”, I found Media Convert, (word of caution – Media Convert is an ad supported network and several of the ads were of […]