I got the Livescribe pen for my birthday. I am addicted to it! I take notes on my readings, make to-do lists, take notes during student teacher observations, and make small pianos to tape onto my instruments to serve as little tuners. What a kick! I have purchased every notebook available and find it all fascinating. What a nerd!!!! Seriously, I am going to try to make a pencast of weighting grades for my ED 652 classes. That will be interesting!
My CUESTE students finished making audio files (podcasting) and video files today. They finished both skills and were all evaluated in 1.5 hours….amazing! That was including time for front-loading the instructions for Audacity and Windows Movie Maker and a bit of talk about how to apply these skills. Millennials rock!
Who says it kooks easy to teach university classes? I would punch them out right now! I have spent hours today experimenting with old equipment, many formats, many codeces (sp?)
We need a rich benefactor to set us up with a lab so that we can actually teach!
Now, I feel better!
Opening Day is creeping up! I am not ready! I am still reading, redecorating, arranging tasks to be done on the house, knitting up the twins’ sweaters, transposing charts for Porter and the Pale Ales.
History was made today! Susan Belhassen, an EOU student from Euguen, presented her project ‘podcasting in Education” through Elluminate software in Blackboard. The technology behaved and we got a nicely-paced presentation by Susan, relating her experience with the Eugene 4J School System’s use of podcasting in the classroom. Totally cool!
Just discovered a new Web 2.0 tool that is so much fun! You can use it to send assessments to students (once you master how to capture the screen!) or have the students map out concepts, creating a tag cloud, or just describing themselves in a fun way! It is at wordle.com….try it!
So, our hiking excursion got rained out this morning. We are doing an alternative activity-eating at Foley Station. Kind of backwards with what I had planned-adding calories instead of burning them. Even the dogs (we are dogsitting Dr/ Gomez’ Chiweenie, Scooter—what a trip he is!) went one time around the HOUSE and then whined to come home….whimps!
Using the rest of the day to get ready for classes that start tomorrow. I am not sure what room I have been assigned or even if I need a key. Now, THAT is planning ahead!
Happy Father’s Day to all you wonderful dads! I called mine in Ohio and they are getting ready to chow on some homegrown beef hamburgers…..yum! I don’t tell him often enough how great a father he is. Maybe he feels it every day—I hope so.
Given the name (and acronym) by Michael Daugherty, past-director of Student Housing at Eastern Oregon University, this oral history project got some recent publicity in an article by Laura Hancock. It is still a project that I believe will be very meaningful in the valley’s history for future Union County residents. The article is found here:
http://chinook.eou.edu/ua_story/index.cfm?ID_num=874
A sample of the OHGR database can be accessed here: http://pierce.eou.edu/ohgr/
I had to change several pieces of software to satisfy the requirements for the IT department (all good reasons- no money to buy commercial software, providing a better model for poor schools by using open source software, and giving my brain that extra push to learn something new) for my Ed Tech classes this summmer. So now, I am playing with sopftware. Love the fun of doing it—don’t love the pressure to do it in so few days. We WILL have a good time in these classes . . . rook or crook! We will be using Audacity, Freemind, Sophie (probably), Google Earth, and who knows yet for the elementary teachers. Yikers! Back to work!
We are having lots of fun and learning tons, too, at our Spring into Science workshops this weekend. I am teachin ga owrkshop on Inspiration and Kidspiration. i am using this diagram as a model for a real-life application. It was built using a public beta version of Inspiration called Webspiration. Find it at: http://www.mywebspiration.com/view/130397abfb2
At Inspiration, you can find a free thirty-day download for Inspiration or Kidspiration. It is found at: http://www.inspiration.com/Freetrial
I used this software to organize all my research papers in grad school. I will be showing a model of how I did that. Should be lots of fun tomorrow!
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