Wednesday, August 19, 2009

techtocktoe

Ok, I had to get creative with the name, I tried a zillion of them, but you know how it is, great minds think alike. It was hard to find one I wanted to use that no one else had thought of. This will be my blog for this year as I start teaching technology. I have taught it before, I spent three years teaching it at a local charter school, but I also taught many other subjects as well. Seeing as this is a new experience and a new district for me, I thought it was only fitting that I get a new blog. I want my students to blog and I hope they do. Blogging affords us an opportunity that texting, facebooking, myspacing, and twittering do not. We have as many characters as we want to tell a story, share our work, and keep in touch. I have been blogging for about 7 years now and I have to say that I am pleased when I look back on the years of posts. They are a map of my life and what I was thinking about at that moment. I could journal, but I prefer to type. I can access my blog most anywhere and add to it at any time, even from my blackberry, or ipod touch. That works for me. Today I am getting my eboard ready for this year and debating if the entire curriculum should be posted there or not. I think not, who is going to read it anyway? It will take up too much of my alloted 500 mb.
As I make the sign-up sheets for the teachers in the computer lab, I know that we need an online option so teachers can see the availability of the lab from anywhere. It is a pain to run down to the lab just to check. We sometimes write our plans at home, you know. After trying 6 different calendar programs that share, I have concluded that I will just use google docs. It will be simpler and if the server goes down, as it occasionally does, we can still access it. Teachers will still have to sign up on the printed sheet in A-7 because I do not want anyone to mess up the online document, I will change that myself. I will probably hate this either way. There is NO good way ever for this type of thing unless it is ALL online, offline, or on the server. I am sure I will regret it.