This and that

Geography Bee last night went well. We had to put the program together quickly at the last minute and we weren't sure which adults would be available. No Patty Robeson -- it just didn't seem right, although we carried on OK anyway. Pete Odell made an excellent judge for the second year in a row.

Our practice MSA tests went OK. There's certainly a lot of work to setting all of them up with appropriate accommodations. It will be interesting to see how the students do on the real tests, particularly the online Mod MSA. Since it's presented by the same Pearson Access that the online science was last year, it should work dependably. However, how much science do the students really know?

It seems like a long time between STEP sessions. This year (#2 for the school, if not for me) doesn't seem nearly as heavy in participant requirements as last, although it's also not rich in hardware benefits. I'm sure we'll be glad we entered, although it's hard to keep up the enthusiasm with such long gaps between sessions.

Inauguration Day

President Barak Obama. Who would every have guessed?... What will that mean for technology? For education? For testing? For the economy? I guess time will tell.

Google Earth for Geo Team

Since the Computer Lab windows are back in and the Geography Team can meet in our room instead of in the library, we had the students using Google Earth. After I demo-ed it, I had the kids, working in pairs, locating specific places around the world and taking screen shots of a list of places. Then they inserted one of their shots into a MS Word document and wrote a few sentences about that place. Not bad for 30 minutes! As you would expect, a few kids were very knowledgeable about Google Earth, while most had never used it. Good hands-on approach for continents, countries, landforms, landmarks, etc.

What should I blog about?

I have nothing to say. The holidays are over and school is back in session. Big tests are coming so I'll be using technology for that, rather than for direct instruction of students. Bleak mid-winter...

Happy New Year

'Twas a lovely holiday season. I wonder what it will be like with a baby next year? I wonder what technology will be like by the time he's my age. Kinda scary!

I'm keeping these "postings" for when we can actually put them somewhere. Our initial STEP meeting was "interesting" at Ammendale but we need to meet again soon so as not to let the enthusiasm drop. Still, it was an honor to be chosen and we BES'ers need to have a good showing for our school.