Kathy–KISK

I know we are suppose to blog much more frequently than I do…but where is the time. This morning I sat down to blog, to try and remember what happened over a week ago. As I began to login, in comes Logan. Now Logan is one of the cutest little boys in PreK, but he is also one of the most active. He requires my attention and also wants to play, whether it be with soldiers or computer games, the morning is his time to play. So…I began blogging and this is what Logan wrote apeoglkaksdn;fan;cba;jdbv;ajb;k;a;jkb;a. It is his way to say  good morning to everyone on the blog. So good morning to you all and now I can begin my blog for the day.

Last Tuesday, there were only a few of us in class–but I like it small. It allows that extra special attention I sometimes need to complete a task. Where to begin with all the information Rolly gave to us about EBooks and EReader. How exciting it is to have books at your fingertips, especially while you travel. My only concern it how many books I can have on my handheld. He also told us we would be making ebooks. This would be a great idea for an English class. Student could always have their books with them, highlight important text, underline vocabulary, make notes. WOW what a great idea. It would also lessen the cost of books to a school, since many of the ebooks are free. So using the handheld for English class would 1) make books convenient, 2) help students to take better notes for analysis of the text by highlighting, 3) inexpensive. So using Baen Free Library or ManBooks.net could help a great deal.

Next we saw a video about a school that distributes and uses handhelds in the classroom. WOW, the video was reat. It showed how to use the handhelds in all types of classes. I often find that technology focuses on math and science, but this video showed how the handheld was used in English and History classes. I would really like to visit that school district. I think this is a  video that could be shown to subject leaders and department chairs, so they could see how handhelds would help the students. I thought the little mechanism used to download files to and from the PC was great–line up, place your handheld here and you could beam inforamtion back and forth. The use of the handheld for quizzes, transferring data about a science ecperiment…the possibilities go on and on. I wonder if someday I will want to teach from a distance. Let’s say I am sitting in my favorite chair at home and a student sends me their homework; I respond. I can use my handheld (beaming long distance would be cool, can you imagine the satellite use) or blogging. Things change so rapidly…after the homework is reviewed we could have a video conference and discuss the content of class.

So using Ebooks and blogging could certainly make a difference in school as we know it. Team teaching with handhelds and blogging, sharing files instantly instead of printing the information. So many possibilities. So many ideas. So much to learn.