Great idea for a tech. discussion group!

I feel that I do a reasonably good job of incorporating technology into my 7th grade English class. I'm very fortunate in my access to technology. I have a Smartboard, a cart of 27 laptops that I share with 4 other teachers (who only use them sporadically), headphones with mics, 4 desktop computers, and a Flipvideo camera.My district offers outstanding support from the ed tech department - from lesson ideas to training to co-teaching opportunities.



In my class, we use the internet… Continue

... but it's causing serious disruptions at my school. This is the lake in the center of the school. Everyone's having to take an enormous detour to get anywhere today.

The is the lake outside my portable.

Generally I enjoy being in the portables and wouldn't trade it (depsite the distance from the restrooms and the fact that we get forgotten when it comes to breaks during TAKS… Continue

I used to do this lesson on why we use the dictionary (or any reference work) when we write. I would get the hammer from my toolbox and a nail and then the big rock that I used as a bookend. I would talk to the kids about how I have used rocks as hammers in extremis, but how we all know that the best tool for the job is the hammer in this situation. Then I would apply that to writing and we'd discuss how reference works can help the writing process and are tools we should be using as… Continue

To begin our journey last Saturday morning, Roxanne, Pam, and I visited first the gardens at the Shultze house. We wandered through there, naming plants, talking about who and what they reminded us of. For me, it was my mom and Euell Gibbons (my husband calls my mom Euell), Tinkerbell's house (the flowers that hung there waiting for Tink and all the other fairies to come home).



Then there were the cats we first noticed under the bushes that had the word cat in their name that I don't… Continue