making videos using movie maker

Wow! I made a 2 minute movie and it was one of the toughest things I ever did with technology. I am proud to say that I am finished. I hope everybody out there makes one someday.

Thoughts on personal writing...

On Dr. Houghton's online textbook, http://ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/EDELCompEduc/Ch3/Ch3a-frames.html
the thoughts converged on personal and collaborative writing tools. What can we get from using outlining with Microsoft Word or other word processors? Are PDA's important? What can we get with searching over the internet? These are only a few things to consider as we sift through the multiple grands of sand that is our technology 'beach front property' known as the computer.

Publishing on websites

So much goes it to publishing things on a website. Dr. Houghton's, website; http://ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/EDELCompEduc/Ch12/Ch12frames.html
is a very interesting site dedicated to this task. The use of SeaMonkey's browser Composer's function was an eye opener. The more I read and try this, the more I am amazed.

Technology goes boink!

That is from one of my favorite cartoons; Calvin and Hobbes. I spent so much time on my classroom layout and the panoramic movie. The movie is terrible because the camera is so high quality that the pictures had to be de-pixalated for it to be saved in a movie file. The pixels are all wrong and the shots have the ceiling views. Oh, well, at least I am learning!

A Reflection-Technology

Reading chapter one from "eThink-As An Emerging 21st Century Problem Processing Curriculum" ( http://ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/EDELCompEduc/chapters.html ) I am amazed how fast technology has come. It was just 1994 when I went to Sears and bought a Macintosh and went on the internet-it was comercialized that year. Looking at the timeline of technology, there is an incredible amount of time during human existance that we made tools, wrote text, spoke in languages, read written words, worked, invented and lived. In only a short time, however, we developed the technology of computers and here we are.
Gone are the days where we were called inside for dinner by ringing a bell (when I was little we kids all hung outside 'till we heard our parents call or the sound of our bell beckoned us home-we would yell, "five more minutes" of course). Now we have cell phones and pda's that tell us our schedules and where to be.
We have to embrace technology even though we long for those days when it was a little more simpler. The speed of technological advances is staggering and we just have time to take a breath sometimes. This is the way our culture is going, and as an educator, I want all my students to learn all they can about the technology that is available; to use computers, programs and software. Our goal should be to continue (or in some cases, become) members of our growing cyber community. We have to look ahead, even though it may be fun to look back once and a while.

Science Snippet-Thing-Rainbow

The rainbow (this picture was taken by your author in Asheville, NC, on 3/15/08) consists of the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (can be taught in science classes learning about the light spectrum as the mnemonic, ROY G BIV).

Science Snippet-Place-Babylon

Most scholars agree that from 2400 BC to 300 BC, the abacus was invented by the Babylonians.