Bill MacKenty

Technology strengthens, deepens, and broadens our learning...

I’d like to extend a special welcome to the fine readers of School Library Journal.

I’m also pleased to introduce a games in education wiki.

Please register if you haven’t, and contribute to the wiki!  If you are new to wiki’s, I invite you to check out this small help guide.  The best way to understand how a wiki works is to is to login, and click edit on a wiki page!

Leave it to the folks at eSchool News to uncover this gem!!

The folks over at School Span have created a rubric to measure school websites.

The rubric looks at several items, including:

Basic Contact Information on home page
Frequency of updates to district site (including news)
Obsolete Information
Calendar of events for end users
Feedback/Interactivity
Email Subscription Options
Centralized Information
Publishing Staff
Website Navigation
Emergency Contact/Security
Web Development Policies
Contributions from Faculty
Contributions from Students
Use of student images
Use of Graphic Images on Web Site
Download Time
Readability and AEA Compliance

etc…

This small pdf is a guide for new users to use acrobat reader.  It covers zooming and selecting text. 

Part of my new job at Hunter College High School is to create and run staff technology professional development.  Because I like to share stuff, here’s a link with all the materials I’ve created.  Lots of movies, PDF guides and the like.

Enjoy!

Dave McDivitt has a really good post about his opinion of educational technology.  I think the most salient idea is the confusion in teacher preparation.

I think the mix up comes in when we look at teacher use of technology and teacher educational use of technology.

It’s one thing to know how to email, search the web, type up a newsletter, and use powerpoint.  But it’s an entirely different matter to effectively use that technology to strengthen, deepen and broaden student learning. 

It’s an important discernment.

How can we best use powerpoint to make a point?  Or perhaps a better question, how can our students best use powerpoint? I note Maine has recently renewed their commitment with Apple computer to put a laptop on every kids desk. I think this is the type of action needed to make a difference...the kids need to be using technology as a primary learning tool

As Apple Matters says:

“...Dr. Muir makes one other point, though, that bears repeating. He looked at technology initiatives that focused on hardware and software and found no impact on achievement and engagement. He compared this to initiatives that emphasized teaching and learning. These types of initiatives were the successful ones...”

I just met the new math chair today - great guy.  He suggested a couple of fantastic shareware programs for graphing and fractals, I’d like to share them with you:

Noel Giffin’s winfract
Graphmatica by kSoft.

...and of course a site with some advanced math games…

Jeff Week’s Geometry games