Back to School

Time to iron the white shirt, put up my short pants, and t-shirts. It is time to go back to work.

iWorks Numbers Training

As our middle school students reach the point in their science fair projects where they need to create data charts, our 6th graders learned to use Numbers on their MacBooks. Some teachers asked for step by step instructions for their students and others took a different approach. Instead of direct teaching how to use Numbers, many of our 6th grade teachers teamed up students and spent class time exploring how Numbers works. These student learning communities utilized online tutorials and Help documents. They also accessed posted documents on their student wikis to teach themselves how to use Numbers.

My vision of supporting teachers is to provide teachers with just in time support, links on teacher wikis to resources, face to face instruction of students, and whole class instruction. The key is flexibility.

John Blake has shared a video with you

Hi there.

John has shared a video with you: 1 to 1 Laptop Learning Initiative

His/her message:
This is a video highlighting our Central Middle School Laptop Learning Initiative, Whiteville City Schools, Whiteville, North Carolina-- where we are "empowering learners for a globally interactive future".

Sincerely,

John Blake
Technology Facilitator

http://animoto.com/play/rkIMhsXwvFH79uODoenGSw?from=share

If you like it, why don't you try creating one yourself? It's free and really simple, so head over to our site and give it a try:

http://animoto.com

We look forward to your visit! Sincerely,

The ANIMOTO Team

Glogster

How I Resize Photos on My MacBook Pro

A: Here are several Photo Resizing Strategies I use.

1. Email resizing: In iPhoto, it is easy to select several images and click on the email icon. When Apple Mail launches, a window pops up and asks what size you want to send the images as....using that menu, I select small and compose the message. After that, the images resolve in the message, and I select all the images, then control click and select Save Attachment to the desktop. This is how I do it.

2. Export: You can export photos from an album or your entire iPhoto library to send them to others or import them into other applications.
Read more--; http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1100
If you opt to use this iPhoto Export feature, I here's a clearly written site: http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=294 This is a excellent "steps page".

3. Third Party Apps:
Picasa
The newest photo editing tool I have found that has a great free collage creating tool is Google's Picasa 3.0 Beta for Mac. My students like it too. It has built-in templates to modify the layout and auto scrambling of the images. Picasa has a few other great features like photo effects and photo slideshow movies with basic titles and captions. It is very easy to use. 6th graders just turn it on and go with it.

Resize!
This app is a simple program designed to resize a folder of pictures in one step. It's faster and easier to use than generic graphic programs... and it's free! http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16845/resize!

Comic Life
Bruce Ketcham, middle school history teacher and coach has been using Comic Life to create photo collages and add hip looking titles. His photo collages are mostly from his sports teams. I would love to be able to take these to a commercial photo processor and have posters made for the kids-- need to sell some bottles or aluminum cans I guess to make some extra cash to cover the cost. Comic Life integrates with iPhoto and images are re sized to fit the boxes or panes in the templates in the comic strips when you drag and drop the photos, they pop right in place. Titles can be quickly added with a variety of font styles that can be customized in a snap. Comic Life is not free, but is just a wonderfully flexible tool, I highly recommend it for laptop using classrooms. Students and teachers can invent ways to use Comic Life that are sure to dazzle and amaze the none believers.

Snow Closes School

 Feb. 4, 2009. This a collage I made from photos taken on our snow day this past week. 

Snow Closes School in Columbus County

Well, today was an optional teacher work day. I am hoping that since school was closed, I will not loose my annual leave day. The last time this happened, teachers that took annual leave ended up loosing that day. And the teachers that just stayed home did not have the day taken out of their pay. I need to ask that question tomorrow!

Enjoy the video.

Fw: MLK Day First Alert Forecast

Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel

-----Original Message-----

From: WECT@subs.myweather.net

Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:55:57

To: Me
Subject: MLK Day First Alert Forecast

John,

It now appears southeast North Carolina could see some light snow late tonight and into early tomorrow! Before we see the chance of wintry weather tonight we have a few weather issues we must deal with this morning. A dense fog advisory is in effect through early morning for the entire area. Use your low beam headlights and don't follow the car in front of you too closely. In addition with the rain we saw yesterday and temperatures hovering near the freezing mark, we could see some black ice on bridges and overpasses so be careful! Later today it will be mostly cloudy and cool with highs in the low 50's. Tonight a fast moving low will move into northwest South Carolina. This storm will race offshore early tomorrow morning. It looks like we will see rain quickly changing to light snow by late evening. Overnight lows will be in the low and mid 30's with some light accumulation possible. Tomorrow morning winter weather advisories go into effect. Light snow will continue through the early morning. By 10 AM light snow will taper off to flurries as the low pulls further away from the area. Arctic air pouring into the area will keep temperatures in the low and mid 30's through the day. Wind chills should run in the 20's with a stiff north wind gusting over 20 miles per hour at times. Bundle up!

A very cold night is coming up tomorrow night with clearing skies and lows in many spots in the teens. A cold Canadian high will be moving into the southeast U.S. With the high near us on Wednesday it will be sunny and still cold with highs in the upper 30's. We expect one more very cold night Wednesday night with lows plunging into the low 20's. As the high slides offshore Thursday it will remain sunny but turn milder with highs in the low 50's. Friday will be even better with mostly sunny skies and highs back in the low 60's. Another cold front approaches the area over the weekend. Ahead of the front Saturday will be mostly cloudy with highs in the mid 60's. We could see a pretty good rain chance late Saturday into early Sunday. After some early showers, Sunday will be mostly cloudy and colder with highs in the low 50's.

Have a nice holiday,

Eric Davis

Click here for a hour by hour forecast for you community.

Meteorologist Eric Davis

Your detailed weather forecast is available. Click here:

http://pmc.myweather.net/PFP2/default.asp?host=wect

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WECT News

WECT is Where News Comes First with the best local coverage of news, weather and sports on Carolina in the Morning beginning at 5 AM, WECT News at Midday, plus WECT News at 5:00, 6:00 and 11:00.

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On this date in 1977 . .

Snowflakes were observed at Homestead and Miami Beach in extreme southern Florida.

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This message was sent to me as part of the WECT Personal Forecast service.

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL MESSAGE!

Update: We may get 3 inches. OMG! There will not be a loaf of white bread or gallon of milk in Chadbourn tonight...panic time. ha ha Tip: Stay off the roads, this kind of weather brings out the Crazy in people.

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection : Subject Index : Science

This is an interesting resource for science: 2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection : Subject Index

Science is traditional divided in curriculum terms into Chemistry, Physics and Biology. Some of the science articles are long and complicated but "elementary" articles have been included where possible. A good starting point is the "portal" pages for subjects which are listed at the foot of this page together with some general science articles. The Chemistry section is large and includes reference articles on all the elements and common compounds. The Physics section includes Astronomy, the Planets and a lot of technical articles. Biology includes Health and Medicine as well as articles on plants, creatures and lab Biology. There are also several sections on important scientists in the "people" section, divided into "astronomers and physicists" "human scientists" and "chemists".

http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/index/subject.Science.htm

Fw: Some things to know!!

Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel

---

From: "Frank Q. Blake"
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:30:07 -0500
To: (me)
Subject: FW: Some things to know!!

---

Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 13:38:13 -0800

SOME GREAT THINGS TO KNOW (Just print and stick in your kitchen drawer) 1. Budweiser beer conditions the hair 2. Pam cooking spray will dry finger nail polish 3. Cool whip will condition your hair in 15 minutes 4. Mayonnaise will KILL LICE, it will also condition your hair 5. Elmer's Glue - paint on your face, allow it to dry, peel off and see the dead skin and blackheads if any 6. Shiny Hair - use brewed Lipton Tea 7. Sunburn - empty a large jar of Nestea into your bath water 8. Minor burn - Colgate or Crest toothpaste 9 Burn your tongue? Put sugar on it! 10. Arthritis? WD-40 Spray and rub in, kill insect stings too 11 Bee stings - meat tenderizer 12. Chigger bite - Preparation H 13. Puffy eyes - Preparation H 14. Paper cut - crazy glue or chap stick (glue is used instead of sutures at most hospitals) 15. Stinky feet - Jell-O! 16. Athletes feet - cornstarch 17. Fungus on toenails or fingernails - Vicks vapor rub 18. Kool aid to clean dishwasher pipes. Just put in the detergent section and run a cycle, it will also clean a toilet. (Wow, and we drink this stuff) 19. Kool Aid can be used as a dye in paint also Kool Aid in Dannon plain yogurt as a finger paint, your kids will love it and it won't hurt them if they eat it! 20. Peanut butter - will get scratches out of CD's! Wipe off with a coffee filter paper 21. Sticking bicycle chain - Pam no-stick cooking spray 22. Pam will also remove paint, and grease from your hands! Keep a can in your garage for your hubby 23. Peanut butter will remove ink from the face of dolls 24. When the doll clothes are hard to put on, sprinkle with corn starch and watch them slide on 25. Heavy dandruff - pour on the vinegar! 26. Body paint - Crisco mixed with food coloring. Heat the Crisco in the microwave, pour in to an empty film container and mix with the food color of your choice! 27 Tie Dye T-shirt - mix a solution of Kool Aid in a container, tie a rubber band around a section of the T-shirt and soak 28. Preserving a newspaper clipping - large bottle of club soda and cup of milk of magnesia, soak for 20 min. and let dry, will last for many years! 29. A Slinky will hold toast and CD's! 30. To keep goggles and glasses from fogging, coat with Colgate toothpaste 31. Wine stains, pour on the Morton salt and watch it absorb into the salt. 32. To remove wax - Take a paper towel and iron it over the wax stain, it will absorb into the towel. 33. Remove labels off glassware etc. rub with Peanut butter! 34. Baked on food - fill container with water, get a Bounce paper softener and the static from the towel will cause the baked on food to adhere to it. Soak overnight. Also; you can use 2 Efferdent tablets, soak overnight! 35. Crayon on the wall - Colgate toothpaste and brush it! 36. Dirty grout - Listerine 37. Stains on clothes - Colgate 38. Grass stains - Karo Syrup 39. Grease Stains - Coca Cola, it will also remove grease stains from the driveway overnight. We know it will take corrosion from car batteries! 40. Fleas in your carpet? 20 Mule Team Borax- sprinkle and let stand for 24 hours. Maybe this will work if you get them back again. 41. To keep FRESH FLOWERS longer Add a little Clorox, or 2 Bayer aspirin, or just use 7-up instead of water. 42. When you go to buy bread in the grocery store, have you ever wondered which is the freshest, so you "squeeze" for freshness or softness? Did you know that bread is delivered fresh to the stores five days a week? Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has a different color twist tie. They are: Monday = Blue, Tuesday = Green, Thursday = Red Friday = White and Saturday = Yellow. So if today was Thursday, you would want red twist tie; not white which is Fridays (almost a week old)! The colors go alphabetically by color Blue- Green - Red - White - Yellow, Monday through Saturday. Very easy to remember. I thought this was interesting I looked in the grocery store and the bread wrappers DO have different twist ties, and even the ones with the plastic clips have different colors. You learn something new everyday! Enjoy fresh bread when you buy bread with the right color on the day you are shopping.

Laptop Update

I have not taken time to post on the blog in a long time.

Should I delete this blog.

I am considering it. Just not enough time in the day to do everything.

One-to-One Laptop Training in Whiteville

Live .TV show provided by Ustream

NECC 2008 Through Distance Learning

And yet another summer passes sans attending the mega ed tech conference NECC.

No, I will not be bummed out by not have the seeming unlimited funds of districts around the our nation. Districts that sent hordes of eager participants to this years bash at San Antonio. I will not get any cheese with my whine. On the positive side, I have been lapping up the scraps and crumbs of leftovers from NECC. I have found streaming video http://www.kzowebcasting.com/necc/ and the best part is that I could fast forward through the presenters crowd warm-ups, self-promos, shout-outs, and even parts without audio. Would I pay for this? No. Would I recommend it to others. Absolutely! The chat feature is wonderful. Send you fellow teachers a link to the site on Twitter or IM or Plurk, or Pownce and have them comment and give feedback while viewing a particular presentation. Now, I have been a fan of David Warlick for many years and always love to listen to his presentations. Here is how I see sharing these videos with my fellow teachers in my school.

Set up a Professional Development schedule. Maybe call it NECC via Distance Learning, or Converge, Connect, and Transform Learning. Then, using our email server, set up a group of teachers interested in earning credits in technology. From this group of names, have them create a Pownce account. The reason for using Pownce, is that users can setup Events. When the time for the training comes, send the group a link to one of the NECC webcasts and ask the participants to post their comments and questions in the chat room. I have been impressed with backdoor chat. Our teachers would be using MacBooks, so we could launch iChat with Bonjour to connect the laptops. Now, will our wifi handle the streaming or will we encounter buffering issues? That may be the "$24,000 Question".

Other cool "take-aways" that I have picked up include Edtags.org. Edtags.org is a social bookmarking site for educators. Diigo and Del.icio.us are great bookmarking site that I use all the time, but they are blocked by our content filter at school. Edtags.org is unblocked and is now high on my personal list of sites to use. I lacks lots of the numbers of users that the other great social bookmarking sites have, and that is fine. I have been busy adding my bookmarks in Edtags.org and marking them for use by my friends only. This way, I can add teachers in my school as users and add them as my friend so they can access my educational bookmarks and add another tool to our learning community.

Mogulus.com is really exciting. However, it does not make the cut of the content filter in our district. It is also flagged for inappropriate content.

I will not be so bold as to consider this to be a master list of tools for the classroom. Hopefully, I will be able to find time to post additional resources.

Schoooooool's--- Out For Summer!!!!

Where did all the time go? Why did I not use this great tool?

Well, first of all, I have no real excuse. But looking back at the school year, many factors contributed to not using blogs. One key difference this past year was Twitter. Instead of spending time thinking and writing, I constantly found myself glued to mini blog posts. I have never enjoyed writing. I am a horrible craftsman of language. My writing teachers always told me I wrote like I talk. This was nice way of telling me that in their opinion, anyone from eastern North Carolina is dumb. I feel confident that all my formal writing teachers are either dead, or tucked away in a nursing home by now.

I have also spend considerable time with my students learning to use Google Sites. I set up an account for my classroom which required students over the age of 13 to use their school email account. I had several students over 18 years old and they used their personal accounts from Yahoo or AOL. I did not use it at all with my under 13 y.o. students.

I liked using Google Sites for one major reason- Google Docs. The Google Site Google Docs feature is really nice with high school students. I was able to post PowerPoint, Word Docs, and spreadsheets. If we were studying cell processes, and I found a document I wanted them to read, I uploaded it the the Google Doc site and "shared" them with the students. They could work in teams or individually on projects.

When it came time for students to write their term paper, I had a hard time convincing my students to use Google Docs. They did not like having to log in to Google and uploading and then when they needed their doc, logging in downloading their document and remembering to upload it again. My students did not like the way Google Doc reformatted their documents. So, I will not try that again for term papers. The best tip I learned from this experience- tell the students to buy a cheap thumb drive and story their term paper on it. I loaned two of my thumb drives and the students never returned them. I should have gotten them to leave their cell phone with me until they returned my thumb drives. Oh well, maybe it was worth it.

It is summer time, time to recharge my batteries. Time to turn off the computer and take some walks outside. Gas is too high to ride around...have a good summer!

Here is a video created by one of my students in our Photography in Science class.

Our Graduates

Celebrating academic accomplishments is good for the soul.

Plant Growth and Skills

Students in my middle school classroom are participating in an activity were they are growing Wisconsin Fast plants. During the seed germination part of this activity, students made daily sketches of the seeds. They labeled the radicle and cotyledons. They also labeled the seed coat and hypocotyl. Students used magnifying lens to enlarge the small cabbage seeds.

First Sunday of May

Temperatures in the 80s and partly cloudy. Just finished watching a baseball game on TV. I have been looking for some fun activities for my science classes for this coming week online. Spring time has always been a difficult time to keep students on task.

I have a lab activity that is based on Wisconsin Fast-Grow plants. I am just not sure my students will enjoy this. The activity starts with students observing germination and characteristics of seeds. Monday will be a great time to start this project. It is important that my students learn how to setup a controlled experiment. They have no idea what is meant by terms like dependent-independent variable, control group-experimental group. So, I plan to have them use this activity to learn by doing.

Preparing for the EOC/EOG again

So much to cover, so little time to do it.

It is that time of the year again and our students are ready to play. They do not take EOG/EOC serious. I listen to them laughing and say stuff like, they can't hold me back, I have already repeated 8th grade. Some mumble a threat that they are going to drop out when they turn 16.

What can a teacher do? We are in grade 8. These students have been behind since they started school or before. I am not whining, but I am not a magician.

Both boys made it clear that they prefer doing activities to doing book work. Even though both boys wanted to avoid book work and would prefer doing things with their hands, that did not mean that they didn't want to do any book work. In Shop, for instance, Andy didn't mind taking notes about different kinds of batteries. I wrote in my field notes: "Why are they so well behaved in Shop?... Do they not mind doing the book work and notes because they get to do projects and activities, too?" I noticed too, that the Science and Social Studies teachers, who do a lot of projects and activities, don't do so exclusively. Again from my field notes: "'Activity-based' teachers don't always do activities. They still deliver content, and review, and take tests.

Motivating Learning: The Underachieving Learner's Perspective, Summary Report
of a Pilot Study by Mike Muir
We have trying this approach, but there comes a time that in order to pass the tests, specific content has to be reviewed and assessed. It is the law.

Phishing Attempts Via Google Calendar

Over this past month, I have gotten two random appointment requests on
my Google Calendar. I reported the first one to Google, but did not
even get an email from Google over it. Word of warning: do not use
Google Calendar. There are shifty shady characters trying their best
to lure you into giving them money.

I am deleting Google Calendar. You might should consider doing the
same. You sure will not hear from Google- they could care less about
the little guy.

Night Out with my Father

It has been a long time since I have taken the time to attend an event like last night. I have been invited to this annual wild game cooking party, but something has always kept me from attending. When my father, 83, visited our family doctor this week he got invited again. The doctor is one of the main hosts of the event. He extended an invitation to me as well.

The weather was absolutely perfect. Cool enough so that the charcoal grilled venison steaks, grilled air-dried country sausage, (real) buffalo chilly, fried catfish, herb broiled quail, Eastern North Carolina chopped pork barbecue, baked yams, and my favorite- original recipe seafood gumbo. It was truly a feast to behold. The food was prepared by local businesses that sell products to farmers and landowners in our area. For example, the seafood gumbo was provided by a famous cabinet and construction company from Whiteville. I have know the owners since high school some 34 or so years. Mike, one of the owners of the cabinet shop, flew out to the mid west and killed the buffalo. He purchased a custom built rifle just for the hunt. If Mike had to put a price on the kettle full of buffalo chilly, he would have had to charge $1,000 per plate to come close to breaking even. Everyone was crazy about the gumbo. I noticed a local independent restaurant owner critiquing the steaming hot bowl of gumbo. I overheard him comment that he knew that a pot that large had to have cost over six hundred dollars to prepare. I immediately got another bowl full. Peanut butter sandwiches inhaled in my ten minutes of lunch time pales in comparison to the wild game cooked to perfection I eat Friday night.

As for those present, I will not try to list those that in attendance. However, I only saw two other teachers there. One was my future son-in-law. The other was a coach that is an avid outdoorsman. I did see a retired high school coach in the crowd. It was a real who's who of movers and shakers from our rural county. Our NC State Senator made a brief appearance, As did our current Sheriff and several NC Highway Patrolmen, some off duty and some on-duty. Those on-duty officers eat and ran. They probably stopped to ask that we move all those four wheel drive pickup trucks off the shoulder of the road. I parked very close to the food so my father did not have to walk far.

The best part of the evening was shaking hands and getting caught up with all my old friends. I chatted with people I had not seen in 15 years. It was like a homecoming. The funny thing is that none of the men there has a blog, none of them have a wiki, none of them could tell you the difference between Facebook or MySpace. I would be willing to bet that less than 5 of them use email. Yet, they all are making a living, have sent kids to college, could buy and sell most any thing they want, and hunted everywhere in the world, have boats, lake front, river front, or beach or mountain vacation homes. Technology is not part of their lives. Sure they have cell phones so their kids and wives and keep up with them. I did not see a single one of them with a cell phone stuck in their ear. The doctors there left their pagers/cell phones at home. The judges walking around with plates of catfish and cups full of their favorite beverage, could care less about answering text messages or if iPhones will have push email in July.

Social networking still is all about face to face personal contact. I am not going to miss another one of those events. It has been too long since I have been to a pig picking/wild game cooking. Blogging compared to wild game cook offs are a waste of my time. No one reads what I blog anyway. Who cares what a small town school teacher has to say.