Struggling

Wow...where does the time go...I have all of these ideas in my head, but no time to get them down. It has been a week or two since my last post. I have been struggling with the 'time' factor associated with our jobs. Technology today is changing daily. I am constantly reading blog posts by other tech leaders and there are new things to see and do everyday. I have hardly had time to read all of the feeds I've subscribed to, much less comment on those blogs. And isn't the purpose of blogging to connect and have a conversation, not just read and move on? (If I wanted that, I could go back to the good ol' days of Web 1.0 :)

The point here is being able to find a happy medium. When is information too much information? When does learning new things and trying those things out become a problem rather than a solution? A former colleague and mentor taught me that you can't do everything great all of the time....if you try to improve everything you do (math, social studies, writing, reading, etc.) all at once, then none of them will improve. Instead, she suggested, choose one topic to really focus on improving and do it well...next year, you can attack another one. With technology, though, next year could be too late!

Elementary classroom teachers are in the same boat with their subjects that embedding technology into the classroom seems like 'one more thing' for them to do. Part of my position is helping them integrate technology into their classrooms, I am struggling with the resistance. Time is an issue with them, too, so there is a fine line between pushing too hard and not pushing at all. How do we know where that line is? How do you handle your struggles...I know that I am not alone on this one!

It is early in the school year and it is the time to plant seeds with teachers and students. It is the time to make changes in a classroom so that the technology that is available is used to benefit the students in the classroom. It is the time to challenge our teachers and students to change what we do in education! It is surely a happy medium that I must find...I just hope I have the time to find it :)

K-12 Online Conference

It's on! The 2007 K-12 Online Conference has started and will be ending.....well, it may never end! The conference, mainly organized by David Warlick, is designed to connect educators in an online environment and stretch the boundaries of the traditional conference. Here is the write up from their site:


The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2007 conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries”. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.

So...when you have a chance, hop on to the site and check out some of the offerings....

New Search Engine

So...there is a new search engine in town, PolyCola! This new search engine allows you to search two different search engines at the same time. When you type in a search and choose the two search engines you want to search, the results show up in to different panes in the same window. You can compare sites, images, etc. I haven't used it with kids yet, but I can imagine the possibilities of teach search strategies, ethics and good decision making when it comes to searching for topics. Give it a try on your own sometime and let me know what you think!