Random
NPR : 'Now is the Time,' The March on Washington
Forty years ago today, 250,000 people gathered in the nation's capital to demand equal rights for African Americans. The March on Washington, with the sheer size of its crowd and the powerful words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was considered the historical tipping point in the struggle for civil rights.
Learning & Leading with Technology Weblogs are featured in the September 2003 issue of ISTE's journal, Learning and Leading with Technology. Will's blog is highlighted, but it looks as if they didn't talk to him. The authors point out the potential of the medium for use by students as a journaling tool. The article is not available online.
Teachers learn new tricks as the Internet expands their professional horizons. [New York Times: Education]
Nothing new or earth shattering, but a nice overview of how some teachers are using the Internet as a communication vehicle, and as a resource for lesson planning.
The New York Times: Circuits Several interesting pieces today about technology and learning. Included is a piece called Can Johnny Blog?, which highlights the work of Will Richardson...
I am the principal at Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. I use this site mainly to make notes to myself about technology and how it can be used by teachers and students to gain a greater understanding of their world, and as a means to tell their stories...
Questions or comments can be addressed to
tim at lauer dot com
Books and Publications
"Innovative Approaches To Literacy Education: Using The Internet To Support New Literacies" (International Reading Association), Contributor, Chapter 10, Bee Stings, Wooden Blocks, and Web Browsers
Scott Foresman Internet Guide:
ISBN 0-673-62225-8
Recent Articles/Interviews
"What is a Blog? Educators Discover the Newest From of Immediate Communication",
by Craig Colgan , American School Board Journal, July 2005
“Google Maps inspire creativity”
by Corey Murray, eSchool News Online, June 15, 2005.
“How do you communicate with students who have grown up with
technology? Schools are looking to technology for the answer.” by Kevin
Delaney, Wall Street Journal, Jan 17, 2005, pp R4.
Recent Presentations
Lessons Learned: A Panel Discussion about Creating Educational Communities Online,
National Education Computing Conference - June 30, 2005
Effective Weblogs in Education: How to Create, Manage, and Communicate!
National Education Computing Conference - June 28, 2005
Remixing Wikis with Rendezvous, Web Services and SchoolTool,
O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference - March 16, 2005
Oyez! The Supreme Court, Now on MP3
Mr. Goldman, a professor of political science at Northwestern University, is taking the original audio recordings of the Supreme Court and turning them into MP3 files for free distribution on the Web.
Something else to add to my iPod playlist...MP3 files of Supreme Court arguments from oyez.com.
Liz Lane Lawley discusses a presentation by demographer Dr. Harold (“Bud”) Hodgkinson about the number of children living in poverty in the US.
Particularly striking—and distressing—were the numbers reflecting child poverty. Twenty-two percent of children in the United States live in poverty. Twenty-two percent. That’s the highest rate of any developed nation. And yet, as Hodgkinson pointed out, there’s little or no public outcry or outrage over this horrifying number... [mamamusings]
I've been playing with the Typepad beta. So far I'm pretty impressed. Very nice interface for page design, editing and such. Very easy to do things like blogrolls, and book and music lists... Take a look... http://lauer.typepad.com/weblog
I have encountered a few issues with the css layouts. (At least on my PC at home, the page doesn't load correctly in IE. ) It will be interesting to see how they price this...
Ed Tech Dev: Microsoft vs. Open Source at NECC
I think educators and the general public still largely know nothing about OpenOffice, because if they did they'd realize there is no need to purchase Microsoft Office. They may not realize that OpenOffice and other free and open source software work just fine on Windows and MacOS too. Trying open source software doesn't require immediately leaping over to Linux and dropping Windows completely.
Over at Ed Tech Dev they discuss an article from the Seattle Post Intellgencer about the large Microsoft presence at NECC. While you had to hunt to find them, Paul Nelson of Riverdale High School had a group of students there in the poster session area running a Linux Terminal Server lab. He had quite a bit of traffic, even though you really had to hike to find the room. Maybe next year we can get someone to underwrite a booth for them on the exhibit floor. Maybe right across from Apple and Microsoft... :-)
I took two teachers from my school to visit his set up and they were very impressed. The lack of the ability to run Microsoft Office did not concern them As one of them said; "A word processor is a word processor. As long as my kids can browse the web and write, I really don't need much more than that."
She also was very impressed with the whole thin client set up. Each student has a login and can work from any terminal. You can even boot to it from Windows boxes and it will run in Mac OS X. This fall we are planning to set it up for her classroom and for our other 5th grade classes at Buckman.
