Phwew. It's been a while since I've blogged, but we had a really good day today. 'Technology as a tool' was reinforced in my mind as we discussed matters in small groups. We need to move teachers towards using technology more, but give them the credit professionally to find their balance (hopefully in using technology more)

And a good afternoon with the Digital Citizenship. Like a teammate said, digital citizenship could more forcefully be represented as 'citizenship' alone; the principles that underly good citizenship in any setting underly good 'digital citizenship'

Ciao.

United Streaming

The website works very well. The benefit of using the streaming is the ability to preview the sections before hand with students, then show them specific sections. I'm using this extensively with the Grade 10s to help them develop chronological thinking as they do classwork.

I did a little 'critical evaluation of websites' lesson with the students (a motivational set, really), and they were amazed by the waybackmachine site and the analysis of the martinlutherking.org site.

Today's Blog

Final exams are winding down, so amongst the correcting, planning for Semester 2, and assisting all the staff with updating their marks/classes/info, I found a little time to write this quick note:

Updates since last time:

1. I'm starting Information Processing on Monday... Grade 10, 11, and 12 at the same time (as we mostly do, I suppose). I'm setting up a Moodle course to handle the assignments, etc. This should reduce/eliminate paperwork for handing in assignments, etc.

2. To do this, I've added my PowerPoint presentations to SlideShare (www.slideshare.net) for easy web access. The content/webpages/lessons in Moodle allow for embeddable slideshows. Quite handy. SlideShare rules! I'm going to get students to use this feature, too.

3. To prevent 'editing' others' work, students will be creating PDF files using an online PDF generator. (www.pdfonline.com)

4. Student portfolios will include:
- WIKI -- for notes and uploaded work (like online slideshows)
- BLOG -- for personal journal/reflection
...... I'm still debating whether to use Edublogs or ClassBlogMeister. Being able to view blogs before they go online (as with ClassBlogMeister) may appear "anti-Internet", but for my students, this may be necessary...

I can't wait for the whiteboards to come in!