Prezi power

Got my Prezi presentation down so I thought I'd get some real life feedback from a student, so I grabbed my 11 year old daughter and asked if she was familiar with Power Points and what she thought of them.  She says she was and wasn't that impressed.  I showed her the Prezi and she was all excited, said it was a lot more interesting than PP.  So there you have it. 
While checking out stuff in the content portion of 517 I was looking at websites that listed different types of sounds that you can download, which made me think of music, which made me want to put some background internet radio while I was working.  So I did some random web searches.  Did you know there is a radio station is Poland that plays disco music all the time?  There is also one in Russia.  And there is a Moscow radio station that plays nothing but Michael Jackson music!  The DJ speaks Russian and they just play Michael Jackson!  The internet never ceases to amaze me.  In the words of Yakoff Smirnoff, "What a country!"
PS.   Don't think because I grew up in the late 70's, early 80's I was just looking for Disco music, it was a coincidence, OK!?!?

Virtual field trip

Just finished my virtual field trip.  Had most of it done, just had to add some finishing touches.  It was actually pretty fun.  I kind of just screwed around and made up some fun choices on where to go.  Played with google docs, forms, maps, and images.  I feel pretty comfortable now with the google stuff.  If you're bored and would like to check it out, he is the link   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NqXCrXOqlfRtDVrn3nrG9zp_6ADgJuZbzsene7KV0ws/edit?hl=en_US  .   I go to Lenape Tech (my school) this Tuesday for orientation for my juniors.  If I get the chance, I'm going to see the IT guy and see if the kids are allowed to have a google account.  Our director is pretty open to new technology (makes sense since we are a tech school).  I'll give her a sales pitch if our IT guy says we can't do it.  Time will tell.

Experimentation on willing participant

I decided to use my 9 year old son as an experiment.  I took him to a couple of the sites recomended to help kids with math and reading skills.  He had a great time!  There were a couple sites that he has already been to.  He likes Poptropica.  I observed him as an educator to see what his reaction was while he was playing the games.  We did one were he figured out tips by percentage on a resturant bill.  He was pretty good at it.  I found it interesting that he really didn't care that he was learning math and reading. He just seemed to be having fun on the computer.  I'm going to encourage some of these sites for him to try when it's his screw around time on the computer and see how that works out.

Open Office

I have 2 computers in my house.  The one I'm on now which is about 4 years old and the one downstairs that my kids use that is about 8 or 9 years old.  I only have Microsoft office loaded on my account and not the kids so I figured Open Office would be good for the.  I downloaded it to the computer, boy did that take a long time probably about 45 minutes to get it to load.  Had to change thier accounts to administrators before it would download properly.  Of course it doesn't tell you that until after you tried it for 30 minutes.  But it does seem to be working out.  I'll update as I'm progressing.  I think this could be useful for my kids at school also.  I'll get to tell them about it in a couple of weeks.

Field trip blog

My field trip assignment on google earth has been a challanging start.  The computers at the school lab are driving most of us crazy.  I ended up having to use a different computer because the first one I had would continuously scroll up on the map in Google Earth.  I started my journey from my house and went to Hoover Dam in Nevada.  I was there when I was a kid and would like to go back again.  My next stop was to Vatican City in Italy.  I've never been there but would like to visit someday.  Once I got the first stop figured out in Google Earth the next ones weren't too bad.  I added the points and it went pretty smoothly.  I did make a 3rd stop.  Figured since I was already in Europe, I might as well stop and see the queen in Buckingham Palace.  That's all the further I've gotten so far.

Week 2 blog

Last nights class was a bit overwhelming, my head is still spining.  I am amazed at how many different websites are out there for educators (and free).  I did look at Gliffy a little bit.  I think I am going to try this site to have my juniors create a drawing for my shop.  I have them measure the dimensions of the shop and locate all the safety devices such as fire extinguishers, emergency stop buttons for the power tools, and the exits.  The drawing that they create are pretty poor.  I hope this website can help improve their drawing abilities and get them familiar with working on the computer.  I know that at least half of my students don't have access to a computer at home.  That might be the tricky part, getting them enough access to computers.

Latest on a Sunday evening

Did a bunch of catch up reading, I'm also a farmer and summer is my REALLY busy time.  I liked reading about all the other students in the class.  We have quite a varity of backgrounds.  Tried posting comments to other bloggers but couldn't so I checked out the "help me" page.  Wanted to try the solution that John suggested but now the computer seems all gummed up.  I'll try banging on it with a hammer a little bit and see if that helps.  It usually works when I use a hammer on my hay baler!

ED 517 tech reflections

I find all this computer technology very fascinating.  I'm old enough to remember life before the internet and I can't imagine going back to that time.  Applying this to education is a challange.  There is just so much out there and so many websites to go to that it can be overwhelming.  How many facts should I teach vs. should I just teach how to find the facts.  If you don't know that the Civil War ever existed, how will you know to search for it.  On the other hand, if I don't know how to find out about all the details, my understanding will be quite limited.
Quite a dilema.

My first blog

Here goes my first try at blogging. I'm not going to say any more right now.