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November 28, 2009
by chris

Using Texting as Pre-Reading Activity

Tonight, I had the chance to take my daughter and her friend to see a movie. While we waited for the main feature, we were bombarded,
of course, by the ads and trailers. I usually tune most of these out, but I paid attention to a couple of these items, as they made use of cell phone surveys. One of these asked a question about one of the movies being advertised. It made me think about the use of cell phone surveys in our classrooms as a "pre-reading" activity, or as a quick assessment of what students know prior to starting a new unit.

It would be so easy for a classroom teacher to make use of a service like PollEverywhere to set up a
few "directed" questions that might help them gauge what students know about a topic ahead of time, as well as along the way. Since many students are already carrying cell phone capable of sending to a service like PollEverywhere, this would be a great (and inexpensive) way of gathering information from many students.

Teachers who would make use of this type of survey could even make some "cool" presentation slides that might mimic those that the students would encounter in a movie theater, to excite them more.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment. Thanks!

0 comments

November 2, 2009
by chris

iPod-Touch in 6th Grade

This blog post will serve to document my first implementation of the iPod-Touch in a classroom setting. I will update the experience as I work with the teacher and students.

Grade Level: 6
Subject Area(s): Reading, Math
Teacher: Mrs. D.
Start Date: 11.02.09
Number of iPod-Touches available to teacher: 2 school units, 1 personal unit

To begin this implementation, I contacted my 6th grade teacher and made her aware of the availability of two iPod-Touches. I asked her if she would like to try using them as drill-and-practice with her students in the area of Language Arts & Math. In addition to the drill & practice, of course, we would branch off and allow the students access to the Internet through the units, and hopefully spark some classroom communication through email messages sent to the teacher from the units. I will work with the students on using the Copy/Paste functionality of the units to gather information from webpages, paste it into the "notes" app, and then send that data to themselves to be used in other areas of their study. Initially, the implementation will run from November 2 through December 21, 2009. After the holiday break, we may choose to continue the trial, or switch the units to another teacher, to widen the scope of the trial.

Apps loaded to the two iPod-Touches include:




2 comments

September 7, 2009
by chris

YouTube in the Classroom? (Reasons to un-block)


Every so often, I receive an email message from a fellow teacher with a humorous YouTube-hosted video linked or embedded in it. Until recently, I saw YouTube as a nuisance in regards to opportunities to supplement what I might be teaching. Lately, however, YouTube has been adding more channels of videos that teachers could make great use of, if they knew what was available. In our district, YouTube is actually blocked by our state filtering system, but teachers who feel they can make use of the materials on YouTube can request the filter bypass password, which changes weekly, from the District Technology Coordinator. (They must agree to never allow students to have the bypass password - the teachers must type it in themselves.) I started this blog post to collect educational channels on YouTube, and some direct links to appropriate videos.

Educational Channels in YouTube:

2 comments

June 29, 2009
by chris

NECC09: The Conference! :-)

Last night (Sunday) kicked off the NECC 09 Conference here in Washington, DC. I spent most of the day involved in a "Photo Safari" organized by Craig Nansen (@cnansen) and other ADEs (Apple Distinguished Educators). We heard a good opening keynote by noted author Malcolm Gladwell ("The Outliers", "Tipping Point"), and then it was off to a really great dinner with friends.

Today, Monday, started off early. Brian Aufforth (NECC "noob"@baufforth) and I walked over from our hotel together, made plans for the day's sessions, and then went our separate ways. (A tip to others who come to NECC is to bring at least one other person from your school district - that way you can cover more sessions, bounce ideas off one another, and help each other with new connections [people] that you make here.) My session choices for the day included two of my "tech passions" - podcasting, and cell phones as tech tools.


0 comments

June 27, 2009
by chris

NECC09: EduBloggerCon

Dateline: Saturday June 27, 2009

EBC09.jpgBrian (@baufforth), Craig (@cnansen), and I (@cwebbtech) have arrived at EduBloggerCon. We're sitting in the large group "into" session, to get organized (although this is an "unconference", so the term organization is used loosely). I will update this blog post, as time goes on, across the day.

The first session I'm going to be in today is "Web 2.0 Smackdown", facilitated by Vicki Davis ("and company"). This is the link to my delicious account, and the weblinks that we're learning about during the smackdown: http://delicious.com/Chris.Webb/ebc09

[Link] Wes Fryer's notes on the Web 2.0 Smackdown.

The next session I'm joining in on is one on the uses of Diigo in education, facilitated by @jgates513. This collaborative social bookmarking site allows for users to create "annotated bookmarks" and share those links out. Teachers could annotate links that are shared with students, and have students add their information to the link - how they're using it, what they've found useful in it, etc. This might be a good tool to look at for the coming year, in addition to more exposure for our students and teachers to Delicious. This past year, one of my sixth grade classes did a research project, and we had the students add their research links to a single, shared classroom Delicious account.
0627091110.jpg(Right: Maggie (from Diigo) shares information with the group.)

What continues to blow my mind (and always has) about NECC and EduBloggerCon, is that the level of sessions is *cool*, but the level of interaction and sharing is *astronomical*! I've spent a decent amount of my personal and professional time looking at websites, and thinking of how they might be used in my teachers' classrooms, but to hear new and innovative ways to do things from other techies and educators is well worth the cost of coming to NECC.

The benefits of EduBloggerCon is the laid-back format of the day, which continues to encourage sharing and collaboration.

0 comments

May 19, 2009
by chris

What's Your Ed Tech Goal for 2009-2010?

Today (5.19.09), I had an informational session on Twitter, and invited educators from my middle school as well as the high school that I serve. We had approximately 22 participants in the room, including several from our Tech Dept. To try and show the educators the “globalness” of Twitter, I posted the follow tweet to my PLN:

Presenting a Twitter overview to staff in < 1 hr. If you're willing, please tweet back one of your poss. ed tech goals for 2009-1010, please also include where you're from, so I can show the "globalness" of Twitter. (Actually took two tweets!)

I thought the variety of responses was pretty neat, so I decided to collect those responses, and post them here. (I took the easy way out and screenshot the responses.)








































































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March 18, 2009
by chris

Backchanneling in Middle School Social Studies

One of the eighth grade social studies teachers at my middle school decided to try and engage his students even more during a 

classroom video by incorporating the backchanneling tool, TodaysMeet. 
This was an awesome first experience with backchanneling in our middle school. In the past, when teachers used a long video (more than a few minutes in length) with students, one could easily observe students "tuning out" the video, trying hard to keep their eyes open, and generally getting *nothing* out of the experience. So not true with this experience!

The teacher began by explaining what backchanneling was, and the reason for the class to be using it. He explained that they would be logging in to a simple site (TodaysMeet.com) and that they should identify themselves with their first name at least. (Note: TodaysMeet is a "closed" backchannel system. The class had to be given the direct URL to the "room" where the backchanneling would take place.) From that point, during the video, the students were encouraged to ask each other questions about what was happening in the video, help each other understand topics or themes they may not have understood, and to answer prepared questions the teacher was going to post. Each student was sitting at either a laptop or desktop machine.

I watched, off and on, across two class periods, and I can say that I've truly never seen middle school students SO ENGAGED in the video! No one was nodding off. No one seemed bored. In fact, everyone was participating in the backchannel in one way or another! 

As I watched this continue, my one suggestion to the teacher was that the next time he did this (and he plans to work with it again), he should take his series of prepared questions and number them with "Q1", "Q2", etc. Then, when the students decided to answer one of the questions he posed in the backchannel, they would begin their answer with "Q1:", or "Q2:" - this way, in the end, it would be easier to see what questions got answered. In TodaysMeet, there is a selection to see the posts live or in a compiled format (which I think of as the "transcript"). When the 1st period was over, the teacher was able to open that transcript format and print it so he could look through and see who was making the best use of the backchannel and how. Just for 1st period alone, the transcript ended up being 20 pages in length!

(Note: Mr. Gerding and I did have a short conversation about the fact that the single backchannel would be continuing throughout the day, and that it might be better to set up a different "room" in TodaysMeet for each class period, so the transcript could be broken out by class period.)

Here's my final reflection on this experience;
  • the students were engaged in 50 minutes of this video,
  • they were collaborating in real time with one another in a mode that did not overtly bother any other student (or teacher), 
  • the "playing field was leveled" because each student was sitting at a single computer (mixture of desktops and laptops - old and new), and finally, 
  • the teacher was able to produce a "transcript" (of 20 pages in length!), which accurately shows what each student was thinking during the experience. 
  • Oh yea, and when asked later, the students DO want to do this activity again! :-)
Amazing! Kudos to Mr. Gerding!

2 comments

April 15, 2009
by chris

My Twitter-Roll

Okay, so everyone below is following me on Twitter. Amazing, isn't it?
What tool did I use to create this? This-> http://walterhiggins.net/projects/follower_mosaic.pl

Get your twitter mosaic here.

0 comments

January 30, 2009
by chris

Using edmodo in middle school Language Arts

The transcript below came from an informal interview I did with a teaching colleague, Tom Scheeler, on his integration of edmodo in his Language Arts classes. (Tom is on Twitter, and has a school webpage.)

Q: Why did you decide edmodo was worth looking at for use in your classroom?

A: I liked the interaction with the students. It seemed more rapid – they would post something and it would be there. It wasn’t going through a check-and-balance thing, I like the ease of uploading files. I like the fact that I can put an assignment there, grade it there, and the kids can get their results there.

Q: What process did you go through to get the students enrolled in edmodo?

A: Rather painless actually. Once I established the groups, they just had to click student and enter the access code. No email address was needed at all. In fact, during the setup, students could choose to use their cell phone number to receive updates.

Q: Tell me more about the cell phone interaction.

A: The students can choose to have their edmodo notifications sent via SMS text message.

Q: What kind of notifications do they receive? I heard you saying to the students that unless they had unlimited texting on their cell phones, they shouldn’t choose to do that part. What does it look like when they receive a message?

A: They actually get to pick the notifications they want to receive. So, if they want to receive replies, notes, alerts. Earlier today, I sent out an alert that their online grades had been updated.

Q: For the students who do not have unlimited texting or cell phones, could they use their email addresses to receive the same notifications?

A: Yes. I encourage them to use their EduTech (Sendit) email addresses, so they can read the alerts and notifications on school computers (because those email accounts are not blocked by the state filter).

Q: After the setup, then you loaded each class as a “group” into edmodo, and each group ended up with its unique access code. Then what?

A: I didn’t do anything to add students to the groups. They added themselves using the class access code. I didn’t make those codes public knowledge across all classes, just shared it during the individual class hour setup.

Q: Now, you’ve got your classes set up, and you’ve begun putting in assignments. Tell me more about that.

A: We’ve put in one assignment (as of the date of this interview), and it was a brief one to see that the students would know how to enter an assignment into edmodo, and to see that I could effectively grade what they had submitted.

Q: What kinds of assignments are you putting into edmodo?

A: Quick, reflective, one paragraph or less in size. Another option you have is that students can upload a file. So one of my next assignments will be to have the students type something in a word processing program (we use AppleWorks), and upload it to me via the site. This way they can take the time to compose and use spell check and such. One of the other things I like about posting assignments in edmodo is the ability to post active web links. It’s so easy to copy and paste the link into the post, and students can use it right away. We can do the same thing on our SchoolCenter page, but the process is more length for us as teachers – whereas this is immediate.

[Tom is an avid user of Google Docs in all of his Language Arts classes, and we had a brief discussion of how students could compose their reflection answers in a Google Doc, make him a collaborator to the doc, or “publish” the doc and send the URL to that published doc to him within the edmodo group.]

Q: What has been your students’ response, over all, to the use of edmodo?

A: Warm. They’re still waiting for the “fun”. I need to put up content that they want to see and view, and say to themselves, “hey, if I go to Mr. Scheeler’s edmodo page today I’m going to find something worthwhile.” The thing they do recognize, and like, is that it’s just THEIR class, it’s just THEIR learning community, where they know each other and feel comfortable. The kids have already figured out ways of using the common posting area to send individualized messages to one another. (The postings in the edmodo group are seen by the group, and the students cannot send private messages to one another.) They start their messages with “To:”, and who they’re trying to write to. It’s similar to what we do on Twitter with the “@” symbol – they’ve figured out to do it by starting with “To:”. Do their classmates get back to them on edmodo, not usually, but it serves as another “conversation starter”. I would like to see a feature built-in to edmodo, like the Twitter “@” so that students could direct their messages to one another. It would still be public to the group, but slightly more directed. Lastly, I’m so early in using edmodo – I’m going to continue to use it across this year.

Update: This blog post is mentioned in: http://educationpurpose.net/2009/01/08/edmodo-more-than-just-a-twitter-for-education/

3 comments

November 14, 2008
by chris

Web 2.0: Awesome Highlighter

Today, a great site was shared via Twitter - Awesome Highlighter (http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/). I posted this site to our local intranet email (FirstClass), and received the following "raves" almost immediately, from teachers.

My initial FC post:
You're doing your lesson planning for next week, and you want to include a webpage reference for your students on your classroom website - something you're going to link to, and they need to read a portion of...how do you call attention to JUST the part of the webpage's text that you want the students to read (and hopefully reflect on)?

Try out: http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/

You go there, copy and paste the website URL that you want to "highlight" into the tool's URL field, and it takes you to that page. Then you highlight the text you want to call attention to, add any notes you want to, and save it. The site then gives you back a URL to your "marked up" page. It's not actually marking the ACTUAL webpage you've selected, but a copy of it.

As an example, here's my work webpage, with a section of text highlighted and a note added - http://awurl.com/Aem764H54 (check it out).

You could then take that URL and copy/paste it into your lesson plans on your SchoolCenter site, and your kids would have access to that page AND JUST the text you're trying to call attention to!


Replies from teachers:

This is really awesome!  I just tried it!   This will be VERY helpful to many teachers, especially if they know there is only part of a website you want to share!  They won't have to spend extra minutes trying to find the part of the text they want to share.  Thanks for sharing.  :o)

Very Cool, Chris.  I also like the fact that you can check the stats of the page to see how many times it has been viewed and from approximately where.  This way, you have some idea about how many students are actually checking it out.  I imagine I'll be using this site soon.

So, taking a lead from the second teacher reply, I did a little more investigation, and passed along information about how users of the site could look at the "stats" for their highlighted page(s):

The stats don't appear on the page easily, but if you start with this URL:

http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/page/stats

and then paste the shortcut to the page you made (in this case, mine), onto the end, to make: http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/page/stats/Aem764H54

then you can see the stats.

0 comments

October 25, 2008
by chris

495 Photos? Sort Smarter in iPhoto

Earlier this school year, my middle school's sister school from Australia visited us for ten days. 

During that time, I, and other teachers, took hundreds of photos to document the visit. At the end of the time, my head principal asked me to create a "farewell" video slideshow to share with our student body and visitors. My first task was to sift through the hundreds of digital photos shared by all of the teachers. This blog post will share my sorting technique in the hopes that it helps others in a similar situation.

I began by loading all the digital photos that were shared with me into my iPhoto. I chose to spend no time editing through the photos until I had them all imported. Once all the photos were imported, I set up a single photo album in my iPhoto that I drug all the digital photos into.

After I setup the single album, I set up two "Smart Albums" - each pointed at the "master" album, but one was setup to include photos 
that had a "star" rating of 5, and the second had a "star" rating of 3. The photos that ended up in the 5-star album were going to be used, for sure, in my video. The ones in the 3-star folder were a "maybe". 

Why 3-star instead of 4-star? Because I wanted to be able to clearly make my choice on the fly, and I was worried that I would accidently mark one as a 4-star, which is very close to 5-star.

The process I used to sift through the mass of photos (at the time I started it was 495) was simple. I opened my iPhoto in full-screen mode, and opened the "Information" tool. Within this tool, I could drag-assign the star rating. Upon making my rating choice, iPhoto then moved the photo into the correct "Smart Folder". I did not delete any photos from the main album - I didn't have to - I just let iPhoto do the moving for me.

When I was done, I had my two folders filled with photos, and I could easily open the "media" menu in iMovie to find the photos I wanted to use in my video. In some cases, I did go back to iPhoto to do some simple editing - croping and adjustments.

I hope this helps others with any large sorts in iPhoto. Share your comments via my "Add a Comment" below.

1 comment

November 18, 2009
by chris

Why an iPod Touch in education?

Twitter hashtag: #whyipod

The iPod Touch is device that I hardly use as a music or video player. Instead, I have chosen to mainly use it as an "Internet Device".

I can check email on it, surf webpages, check my Tech Requests (for work), and even keep up with my Twitter friends on this device. I see some real neat uses for it in education, and intend to buy one of the video cables [cable] [Apple's cable] for it soon so I can show off the pod's capabilities using a teacher's classroom projector.

This blog entry will stand as a list of iPod Touch apps that are appropriate for education. Some teachers have begun purchasing the devices, but really don't know what kind of apps can be put on them. I may list some "paid" apps here, but most will be the "free" ones.

Total number of apps that can be on the iPod Touch - 140, across 9 screens. with 4 apps in the dock.

Apple's description page of the iPod Touch - scroll to the bottom, it contains a neat interactive app "chooser".

Link: Twitter user (Scott Meech) IEAR [Reviews of iPod-T apps for education)
Link: "ThumbTacks" - Very cool mini mic for iPod-Touch 2G+
Link: "iPod Classroom" wiki by @itrt

If you'd like to add to my list, add a comment to this blog entry!

For Cool Acceleometer action:
MarbleMash ($1.99) and Labyrinth LE (Free)

For Music Ed:
Rain Stick (Free), TapTheBeat (Free), Simple Drummer ($.99), and Metronome (Free), Karajan Beginner (Ear Training, Free)

For Social Studies:

For Language Arts:

For Elementary School Math:
FlashMath ($.99), Lemonade Stand ($.99) *Just like the old Apple II game!*, PopMath Lite (Free), Lemonade Tycoon (Free)

For Secondary Math:

For Weather projects:
WeatherBug (Free)

For creating quizzes:
gFlash+ (Free), gFlash Pro ($4.99)

For visual art:
NetSketch ($4.99) *Collaborative drawing.*

Utilities:
Free RSS Reader (Free), Air Sharing ($6.99) *Allows you to copy files between computer and iPod-T.*, Remote (Free) *Allows you to control a computer's iTunes from your iPod-T*, Air Mouse ($5.99), Remote Sound Box (Free-could be used in special circumstances)

20 comments

September 13, 2008
by chris

Recovering Tunes & Photos from iPod

This morning I read a Twitter post from one of those I follow, whose PC had died, and she was looking for a way to get her tunes and photos from her iPods back to her Mac. I had known about (and used) a Mac app called "iPodDisk" before to pull my tunes down from my iPod, but I had never tried to download the photos from my iPod. I did a quick Google search and found these two apps (among others), so I decided to blog it so I can keep track of these options for future reference.

Access the Tunes:

Access the Pics:
I'm going to have to try the iPhoto app and see how it works!

0 comments

June 30, 2008
by chris

Podcasts in the Classroom: A Great Resource for Teachers

Presented by Camilla Gagliolo and Craig Nansen, Apple Distinguished Educators.
Additional information: http://tinyurl.com/6s5szn

Discussed the use of the CNN Student News podcast and what an exciting post it is!

Ran through a group of example educational podcasts.

Online file conversion tool I didn't know about: http://www.zamzar.com/

0 comments

June 30, 2008
by chris

Podcasting & Podcatching for the Beginner

Sat in on most of this session this morning. It was held in a HUGE theater, and truly it had to be - must have been 1,000+ people in there! Whew! It really was a session for true beginners in the realm of podcasting, so I didn't learn many new fundamentals, but that's okay. Sometimes it's just as important to hear additional views of podcasting, that I can then turn around and share with my teachers. 

I'll come back and add in supporting materials later today when things calm down.

0 comments

June 29, 2008
by chris

Hands-on: Oodles of Google

Opening with discussion of Google App domain. Students work in collaborative areas. Example that was set up for this class.


Gotta look at Google Notebook, as a very good start place for students, as they research. The functionality is clear and works well. Notes can be shared (collaboration), and exported to Google Docs, if needed.

There is a Firefox plugin for Notebook. I wonder if it will stay for each student, under our authentication setups?

Discussed Picasa (Photos in Google) web albums. I have been using the iPhoto plug-in that lets you load pics to a Picasa web album. (Link to iPhoto/Picasa Web plugin.)

I didn't know about "Google Moon" [http://www.google.com/moon]. Being a "space junkie", I think this is kinda cool!

I didn't know about "Google Alerts" [http://www.google.com/alerts]. I just set one up to try and catch any information about our Minot swimmer at the Olympic Trials.

0 comments

June 29, 2008
by chris

Hands-on: GPS, GoogleEarth, and Digital Images

[Sunday]

NECC @ the convention centerI'm in this hands-on class concerning how to tie together digital images and GPS/GoogleEarth.


We've just shot some pics out in one of the parks here, and taken GPS coordinates during the process. We've created accounts on Panoramio.com to store our pics, and next we'll be mapping the pics onto GoogleEarth. Very good session thus far!

(Picture at the right: from Google Earth - the convention center. The "Tower of the Americas" is to the lower right corner. Click here to open this location in Google Maps.)

I think it's going to be very important to teach students about longitude/latitude (what do those numbers and marks mean?) along with allowing them to use the GPS units. It's also going to be very important to have the "teachable moment" in mind when working with the GPS units and digicams. Otherwise, the students will get lost in the tech, and forget why they were doing all of this in the first place.

Click on the Panoramio layer in G-Earth, to see many pictures that have been taken of the subject area. Maybe we should do this for the different schools in Minot.

I do still want to work on a project with my 6th grade teachers that teach Egyptian history, to create Google Earth-supported docs that show the locations of the various pyramids and historical events the students are working on. The students could find supporting graphics online (because we can't actually go to Egypt), and embed them into their Google Earth. We could then use SnapzPro to capture the "fly-through" from the students' G-Earth.

Take this one step further...assemble the students' "fly-throughs" on a DVD with a customized main menu background created with a Google Earth snapshot, and use one of the students' photos as the clickable menu item.

0 comments

June 28, 2008
by chris

EduBloggerCon: Social Networking in the Classroom

So what social networking apps are you using in the classroom?

NING, Open source stuff.

"Walled garden" - a closed, protected social network.

Examples: 
http://digiteen.ning.com/ (http://digiteen.wikispaces.com/)

"Authentic audience" has to include other students, parents, teachers, world. Some teachers choose to approve posts prior to students' info going live. Allowing students to have the audience (comments to blog and other postings) can be very powerful. We have to teach the students responsibility for postings, and to be professional in posting.

Instead of calling them "social networks", call them "educational networks".

From CoolCatTeacher -  The President's Rule when posting - If you're running for Pres in 30 years, what would the media say about your posting today?

Okay, so maybe the "hook" for starting an educational network (NING) would be to connect it with a section of curriculum - history studies, North Dakota studies, keeping it meaningful to the students' educational needs and wants.

Could these networks reach students we can't always reach other ways? Can we allow backchannels to exist? Do we open the "walled gardens" up to other teachers the students have, to give those teachers insight into actually WHO these kids are?" I think so.

0 comments

June 28, 2008
by chris

EduBloggerCon: Social Networking for PD

I'm at a sesion titled "Social Networking for Professional Development". This is kinda cool - we're all sitting around talking in this smaller group
(75-100), and people are videoing, blogging, recording (Pearson is doing this), and taking digital photos of each other. There is so much talent and information housed in this one room - I'm in awe!

Quote from session - Meet the people at the door - Walmart does it, why can't we? Meaning, when introducing new PD offerings, meet the people and be inviting to bring them in, and help them be accepting of the new information.

Quote - For effective PD, the tools have to be like the public transportation system - reliable, frequent.

Online PD with Web 2.0 "hook" should give teachers an arena for instant feedback. Give them a safe environment to share both the good and the bad. Question - If we create this environment, should it be moderated?

Okay, I have my "theme" for this coming year - Digital Bridges - Connecting the teachers to the tools, the PD, the community (both locally and globally).

A tough part of PD is that teachers don't always take it seriously, or see the meaning in it. From the session - "When did teachers stop being learners?" This is a worthy question, and becomes the "push" behind creating meaningful PD for teachers. Districts, as a whole, have to look at what PD is "offered" and what PD is "required" - can we make "required" PD "offered" to them in a "meaningful" and "accepting" way? (Did I use too many quotes there for emphasis?)

0 comments

June 30, 2008
by chris

NOOB @ NECC

The Sessions I attended:
EduBloggerCon Session 1: Social Networking for PD
EduBloggerCon Session 2: Social Networking in the Classroom
Sunday - Hands-on: GPS, GoogleEarth, and Digital Images
Sunday - Hands-on: Oodles of Google
Monday - Podcasting & Podcatching for the Beginner
Monday - Podcasts in the Classroom: A Great Resource for Teachers

Okay, so I'm the new guy (term: NOOB) at NECC. It's my first year coming here. I'm here in a "kinda official" capacity, as President of NDATL, but I'm really "tagging along" with Craig Nansen. (He's showing me the ropes.)

I'm going to try and capture what NECC is meaning for me through this blog.

We arrived yesterday (6/27). The flights were really fine, and actually on time. (Can you believe it?) Craig and I are staying at different hotels, and the map I got from NECC made it look like our hotels were miles apart when they're really only a matter of 7-8 blocks apart. We had dinner last night with two friends; Scott Gilbraith (formerly with Apple), and Dan Pullen (ETC Director). Downtown San Antonio was busy last night, and it felt good to be back in a large city (after all, I am from St. Louis, MO, originally!). My hotel is the Westin, and my room is AWESOME!


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