STEM Symposium

Today I attended the Minnesota STEM Symposium at the Science Museum of Minnesota. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. It was interesting to see and hear what teachers and students are doing using some of the technology now available. Many of the "forecasts" for our country and state are predicting shortages in workers trained in high tech careers.

The highlight was Dr. Ioannis Miaoulis, President and Director of the Museum of Science, Boston. He spoke about the ways he is partnering with schools to develop curriculum for learning about how all the "man-made" products in our world are created. I want to find out more about the curriculum and if we might be able to use some of it in St. Paul.

School and Teacher websites

Here at Arlington we have been working on our school website. The "redesign" is pretty much done and looks cool. Now the real work begins as teachers need to add their content to the pages assigned to them. We are going to offer help in a few different ways. The Nov. 9th professional day we are going to have a drop in session for teachers who just need a little help editing the page they created last year. Our own Leslie Y. is also going to come to AHS and give interested staff a workshop on the basics of Urban Planet. There are so many ways teachers, staff, clubs, teams, etc. can use the school website to promote what's going on and have positive free "PR".

I will also be visiting staff to help with individual or department pages. Sometimes people just need a little more help to get the job done, and I hope this will be the catalyst for us to "get 'er done!"

As a part of this program we are also (I think) required to each have and update our own teacher page. By the time this year ends - I think I will be pretty good at the whole Urban Planet thing.

Computer + Projector = Presentation Station?

After our meeting yesterday I said I would post regarding set-up of our new equipment. To really make this stuff effective you need a couple more things.

1. Some type of "cart" to keep all your equipment set up and ready to go, but still mobile if you need to teach in another room or want to move it. Power/outlets for the laptop, projector, and possibly other stuff you may want to project (VCR, document camera, microscope, etc.)

2. Speakers to share sound from DVD player, internet, imovies, and all the multimedia stuff. These can go on the cart also and may require an outlet for power. Huge improvement in sound quality for low cost.

3. Screen to use for your presentation station.

4. The way your classroom is arranged can make a big difference in how well students can see and hear your content. I have been helping teachers adjust how the room is set up to maximize the impact of the presentations. This is also a great way to share student work or have them present work and projects to the class.

There are many places you can go to purchase a cart and speakers, but check around your school first, there may a cart that will work for you. Security can also be a consideration, and you can purchase locks for the computer and projector so they can't be removed from the cart except by you.

I would be happy to help if you need more information or a hand with this.


Here are a couple places to look for some of these things:
http://www.cdw.com
http://store.apple.com

Just type in speakers or locks in the search field and you should see some products. CDW has carts.

Adios!

Bloglines Reader

Added the bloglines reader and imported the other MILP folks blogs. I thought it was going to be added to my blogger site, but seems bloglines is not a part of blogger site. Otherwise it worked and I can now read everyones stuff. Looking forward to Wednesdays' meeting and seeing where we are at and what is next.

Unsung Heros

Used my new computer to create a slideshow for our website here at Arlington. John Witzmann is a math teacher who was selected as an "unsung hero" for his work at school and received a grant to use technology in his classes. Check it out at:
http://arlington.spps.org/

Technology Roll Out!

Used the laptop and projector for Smartboard training. Very nice! Are we supposed to wait for the email to link all our sites together? I guess I need to look at my notes.

Thing #1

Troubles starting this blog for information literazy

computer problems 'bout to drive me crazy.
Joined a new group of cats and we be learning together,
Think I'll do all right if I don't get lazy.