Round Rock Tech Guy

A few nights ago I told my wife, “I need some space.”  While she was jumping with glee and ready to send me packing, I felt compelled to make it clear that I was talking about “Web Space.”  She was only slightly disappointed, but she mustered up the strength to support my blog anyway.   So, I’ve stayed up late the last few nights getting it ready just for you! If you were a subscriber to my blog you should know, I’ve moved it to its very own spot on the web at www.techedknow.com.  

This blog was created to support teachers in their endeavors to incorporate Technology + Education + a little Know-How. 

Share this link with other teachers as I’m sure they will find great resources and tools to use in their classrooms and everyday life.  On my blog you will also find links to other RRISD employee blogs that you will also find helpful in your classroom.

If you would like to learn how to subscribe to Blogs (RSS Feeds) or would like to start a blog of your own please let me know. 

I have decided to move my blog to it’s very own space.  You can find it at www.techedknow.com Please come join me.

Where we give Teachers the Technology Know-How to move their students forward!

This weeks Tech Tip is NetTrekker.  NetTrekker is a resource that our district provides for our teachers, staff and students.  We use NetTrekker because it is a safe way to insure that our students get good, reliable and safe information.  With NetTrekker, if you login through your schools library web page, your searches will be filtered through the state TEKS Standards.  Meaning - your search results will have true academic purposefulness. 

Here is a blurb from their web page, “Each resource is carefully selected by educators to ensure it is safe, age-appropriate and 100% academically relevant.”

I did a search on “Vitamins” and I learned something myself.  Did you know that lots of vitamin D can cause you to lose wait?  Here’s the catch, you lose the wait because too much Vitamin D can cause you to vomit.  Not the right way to loses wait!!  Anyway, I digress, so back on track.

Take the time to introduce NetTrekker to your students this week.  It is a resource that our district provides for you to keep your kids safe and on the right track with their research.  It’s an awesome tool!  The listings of uses of NetTrekker are too many to list here.  Take a look for yourself!

You can get to NetTrekker from your school’s library web page.  If you’re reading this post and you are not a part of RoundRock ISD schools, you can try NetTrekker free at http://www.nettrekker.com/

Keep up the good teaching with technology!!!

Side Note: Most web pages have links to other web pages.  These other web pages may or may not be safe, so I suggest you still do active monitoring during your computer times.  Leaving your students un-attended during computer time is not a safe practice anytime!

Weekly Tech Tip

I’m going to stray today and do a back post.

** A few weeks back I did a post about VoiceThread and how it can be used in the classroom. This morning early when I was reading a blog from one of my feeds I found another post about VoiceThread. This post showed a perfect example of how it can be used in the classroom. I had to watch and read the whole VoiceThread!!! It was that good!!! (not normal for me, I get bored easy!) Please, do yourself a favor and look at the VoiceThread - http://ed.voicethread.com/#q.b62276.i322457 You will find students engaged, empowered, problem solving and passionate while learning at the same time. Thanks for the example, Cool Cat Teacher Blog! http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/ She even has a follow up post about what her students are doing to extend their learning experiences. Awesome Stuff!!!!

(Note:) I’m only giving an example of how it can be used. I’m not promoting any views in the VoiceThread.

** World Wide Telescope coming soon! This sure sounds exciting for the Education and Science worlds. Here is a description from their web page. “The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe. WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.” You can check it out further at http://worldwidetelescope.org/ I hope to be bringing you more info on this when it’s released this spring”

** What an exciting time to be a part of education in such an “information available” age! When I first started teaching we only dreamed of having this kind of information available to us. Now we can not only have it available we can have our students producing it, collaborating on it, and making it available for the rest of the world to see. There are over 100,000 new blogs created daily with a majority of them being student aged creators. There are about 300,000 new MySpace / FaceBook users every day. This is growing by leaps and bounds.

This is where our students are at: Capturing their interests + Capturing their hearts = Capturing their minds!

 Happy Educating with Technology!

Weekly Tech Tip

Templates are a good thing!  For most of us, templates help us save time to not re-create.  This web page is full of power point templates for game show like activities.  All you have to do is copy the slides and fill in the blanks!  How cool is that!? 

Here you will find: Family Feud, The Price is Right, 100,000 Pyramid, Hollywood Squares, Weakest Link, Millionaire, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy and even Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader.  All of these are pre-built for you.  This page also offers links to other templates and teacher resources that you may find interesting.  Enjoy Saving Time and creating fun activities for your students! 

Here’s the link:  http://www.murray.k12.ga.us/teacher/kara%20leonard/Mini%20T%27s/March%20Mini%20T-Games/Games.htm

PS. You will need to know a little about Power Point in order effectively use these.  If you need Power Point training let me know and we can work that out also. 

eXtra! eXtra!

For those of you that subscribe to Blogs and like to keep up with what’s going on in the world, Google Reader is probably the best RSS Reader I’ve found.  Take a look at the different ways Google Reader can be used. http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/01/theres-feed-for-that.html

Take a look at the rest of this blog for lots of info on Google Reader and it’s functionality.  

Here is a video that introduces the Google Reader. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5980861656829941065

The New Classroom (Anywhere Anytime Up-To-Date Learning)

TNC (The New Classroom) is the classroom that goes beyond the building, playground and even the teacher. In TNC the students are more involved than ever. I believe that involvement cultivates learning. In TNC you will find blogs, podcasts, wikis, and other web 2.0 activities. Blogs give students a voice while wikis give the students collaborative opportunities and a community in which to belong. I could go on and on about other web 2.0 services, but my goal is to get you involved in a little of TNC for yourself.

Look at how this school is using a wiki: http://arborheights.wikispaces.com  And this one: http://allaboutmath.wikispaces.com

Here is a blog that you should consider subscribing to: http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/ It’s a blog for teachers. Lots of ideas here! Of course I must recommend my blog: http://roundrocktechguy.edublogs.org It’s full of ideas of how to use technology in the classroom.

Break out the ipod for more than just music; use it for listening to podcasts. A good podcast for teachers to listen to is The New Teacher Hotline. You can go to www.newteacherhotline.com and click the subscribe button. For a directory of education podcasts you can go to www.learnoutloud.com/podcast-directory

For those of you that are already a part of TNC crank it up a notch and help us get other teachers involved. Reply to this blog post with a link to your blog, wiki or podcast so we can see what you and your classes are doing.

Let this inspire you!