A great example of what you can do in the web that would be less effective as a PowerPoint.

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Think Computer Ethics has no place in college prep? Think again.
Who are we?
I have to wonder if we have become a people overly enamored with what we can do with technology. How often do we reflect on what we should be doing? How we can be more safe? How can we share in this knowledge soup without getting burned?

And the message about reflecting on what we should be doing, especially in light of our conversation last night about SmartBoards, is timely.

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OK. Perhaps not evil. But this is why I’ve taken PowerPoint out of my toolbox for teaching. It boils down to the reality that I can use other tools that provide me with equivalent — if not better — results.
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After two days of talking about research in low-incidence disability areas — blind, deaf, severe needs — I’m played. As I was sitting down to post this morning, I was immediately side tracked by a technical problem from one of the conference attendees, despite the fact that it was 6.30AM. When you “do technology support” you have to take these interruptions with a certain level of grace. But it shot the heck out of the rest of my day.
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The conference hotel is small and cozy. The staff has been very helpful and I’ve enjoyed my few minutes of peace when I can step out of the hot meeting rooms and out into the cool, clear mountain air.

This didn’t come out all that well. Perhaps I can get some better snaps tomorrow. The construction that’s going on here is amazing!

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Nancy had this post the other day …

NKDAVIDSON » Just a moment to vent!
I had to calculate grades today for midterms by hand with a calculator, one by one in each class period for 6 different subjects

I suggested that she should consider using a portable drive, and a simple spread sheet to create an electronic spread sheet so this doesn’t happen again. It occurs to me that everybody should be thinking about this idea.

First, while you all have your own computers at home (I think), you are probably dealing with “school computers” during the day. This can be a problem if you want to do some work on a shared computer, but keep it safe from tampering and/or unauthorized access. Often school/work computers are “locked down” for security reasons. One solution is to lug a laptop everywhere like I do, and the other is to just take your environment with you.
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In the interest of getting the discussion going about what should be in the teacher’s toolbox to teach at a distance, here’s my list of the basic tools necessary for TEACHING online. Note that I don’t think every class needs to use all of these, but I think a teacher needs to know this stuff as a minimum in order to teach online.

• Email (including a Listserver)
• Discussion Boards
• Blog (mine)
• Aggregator (with my own feeds in it)
• File repository space
• Web server space
• Text chat
• Word processor
• Graphics software (like Photoshop or The GIMP)
• Spread sheet software
• Firefox web browser
• A broadband connection in the home

Tools that need to be removed from TEACHING toolboxes.

• PowerPoint
• Integrated gradebooks
• Lecture-ware like Elluminate, Centris, and the like

Discuss. What did I miss from the basic teacher toolbox? Do you agree with the three items I think should be removed?

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Monday I asked if anybody knew how email worked and what it might be good for. Based on some of the bloggery that’s come back, let me take some time to walk through the analysis of email.

Historically, email is one of the oldest applications on the internet. The ability to route messages asynchronously based on an address has been with us since the earliest days. Email is a classic example of a kind of technology that has become an almost universal model of content management — the “client-server architecture” model.
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As we get into our week on the basic tool box, consider how we combine tools. In the kitchen we have a collection of tools, from simple to complex, that permit us to do some pretty amazing things. Likewise teachers use a variety of tools and technologies to help students make sense of some body of knowledge. What this class is trying to do is help you all create a collection of tools that will help you learn and that collection is known as a “Personal Learning Environment” or PLE. The concept has been around for a while now and the greater ed tech community is struggling — not only with what this might consist of but also what it will look like.
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Tools are technologies that extend your biological abilities in some way. It’s not enough that you have the tool, but the situation must also be appropriate to the use of the tool. Further, the benefit derived is directly proportional to your skill and knowledge regarding the application of the tool in that situation.
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Twenty-one days ago the class started with a flurry and a bang. The list of things to do was long, strange, and not explained much. For many of you, it was a voyage to the Geek Isles, but there was a method in my madness. There were several objectives in this first unit.
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