Laptops for 7-12

Last night in his state of the state address, Gov. Baldacci announced the expansion of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative in to high school. In short, that means that students and teachers from 7th grade to 12th grade are going to have a laptop for learning. All of them. That is a big change in the classroom. Time to adjust.

COEHD TechTV – Connecting to the COEHD NoteShare Server

We have a backlog captian!

Hi everyone. The start of the semester has brought a heavy list of needs, wants, and to-dos. I apologize to you as this is creating a longer wait time for me to get to everyones issues. Know that I am working my hardest to get to your problem and hope to have things back to normal soon. I don’t like not being able to fix things as soon as they come to me. Thank you very much for the patience, as I know how frustrating it can be. If you believe that something has fallen through the cracks, please send me a quick email and I will get back to you as soon as hyper-humanly possible.

Welcome back.

Hello again everyone. Welcome back to te Spring 2009 semester. Got a couple of things for all of you.

Filemaker 10

The new Filemaker 10 (came out 1/5/09) is here. I will be updating people as the semester goes on. It is quite a bit different than older version. So far I think these changes make it easier and more efficient to use. You may want to take a look at the Filemaker webpage to check out some of the new features. If you want to be upgraded, let me know and I will hook you right up.

Moodle

The college’s Moodle server is growing nicely. I thank everyone for giving it a chance. Most people seem to be happier with Moodle than WebCT or Blackboard. We can be more flebible that those systems as we control everything about it. Also remember, it doesn’t cost us anything to operate other than my time. Call it doing our part in these tough budget times. Maybe we can get the University to give us some of our “cash cow” money back.

If you would like to use Moodle as either a supplement to face to face classes or a method of delivery for an online course just let me know. I am more than happy to sit down with you and make sure you know how to use it.

Professional Development

PD is going to be a bit different this semester. I am not going to be doing any face to face sessions. They just proved to be too difficult to attend for most people. Since schedules are so different it only makes sense to deliver some of that content online. So I will be posting video tips and tricks to this blog through out the semester. These will be a bit more introductory and meant to show you what is possible. As always, I am always ready to sit down with you and help you take things to the next level.

I hope everyone has a great start to the semester. Please let me know of any glitches you may have and more importantly ways that I can help you integrate technology into your teaching.

A couple of Firstclass How To’s

Tech Thoughts from TEF

SEAM blog – http://teamseam.blogspot.com/

Tech Workshops

11/24 – Streaming video – Cancelled. Sorry about that, if you want to talk about it you are always welcome to schedule a time with me one to one.

12/1 – 1-2pm – Quicky Shooting and Editing Digital Video – Learn how to shoot, edit, and export digital video.

12/5 – 10-11am – Introduction to Teaching and Learning in a 3D virtual world. This session will show you the future of distance education and how some at UMaine are already using it.

12/12 – 10-11am – Wikis and Collaboration – Learn how to set up an educational wiki. Think of a web page where everyone can add and edit content. A great way to work collaboratively.

Planning January 23rd

The technology committee is working with the Maine International Center for Digital Literacy to plan a day for all Maine teacher-prep faculty to learn, share, and explore technology integration. Part of the day will be spent planning how best to integrate technology into our program. So if you want to be involved, you need to be there.

We are currently working to get Punya Mishra and Matt Koehler of Michigan State University on campus to share their work on the TPACK model. Check out their presentation at the 2008 Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education conference, good stuff.

We know the 23rd of January may not be the best of days, but it is the day we have. Please mark your calendars and mention it to your colleagues. You will be hearing more soon.

IM, Skype, and Twitter Session Links

Here are a few links to the topics discussed in today’s PD clinic.

AIM – Sign up for an account here. You can use any software that works with the AIM network. Lots of people use iChat.

Skype – Grab to software here.

Twitter – You also saw twirl, the twitter client. You may also want a link to Twitter in Plain English by the Common Craft Show.

CamTwist - The OS X tool to add things to your video streams.

Computer Connection Deals

MaineED 08 – Live Blog on Magnificent Moodle

EDIT: Looks like liveblogging isn’t working right now. Network issues. Oh well. You can just follow the tag #maineed08 to see what people are twittering.

Click Here for the live blog of this session.