Bobcat Tech Tips

Bobcat Tech Tips, the Wiki

Mrs. Noble — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:17:09 +0000

The wiki (a term shorted from wiki-wiki, Hawaiian for “quick”) is a type of collaborative writing; multiple people have access to edit the same online web page, plus software instructions that work with wikis help you create the different pages and links on the wiki site. Everyone connected with Marcia Buker School can help write the Bobcat Tech Tips wiki.

Your wiki address:
http://bobcattechtips.pbwiki.com/

In the Middle of the Road

Mrs. Noble — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:20:43 +0000

Here’s a poem I discovered. It has both simplicity and complexity. I bet it would be great read aloud by an experienced reader. This was written by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, translated by Elizabeth Bishop:

In the Middle of the Road

In the middle of the road there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
there was a stone
in the middle of the road there was a stone

Never should I forget this event
in the life of my fatigued retinas.
Never should I forget that in the middle of the road
there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
in the middle of the road there was a stone.

I really like this poem. There had to have been something momentous about that stone because “Never should I forget this event.” You could say it was mind-boggling momentous because he can’t stop repeating about the stone, the stone in the middle of the road. In life, simple events sometimes aren’t so simple as they appear, or we can get hung up on something and just not let it go, or things can get in the way and impede our paths. Reflecting on this poem, I get a sense of how the “simple” can be wondrous and complex.

Possibly a reason I like this poem so much is because it reminds me of the Sunday Rock. To get from my house to the New Boston Fair, my dad took us over Chestnut Hill, this way and that on back roads, and we went past this rock that somebody re-painted every year: You Sunday Driver, You Stop to Think, You Think to Stop. The road was dirt when I was growing up, but you can actually see this rock too. Visit http://www.new-boston.nh.us/town/info/images/sunrock1.JPG. Ah, the power of the web, to show you something 150 miles from my present location.

Online Writing Tools for Special Education

Mrs. Noble — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:55:50 +0000

Cheryl Oakes and Beth Goodwin from the Wells, Maine, schools presented this workshop at ACTEM, Friday, October 17, with information about online writing tools helpful for all students, especially for special education students. Many of the presented tools can help a teacher apply differentiated instruction.

Oakes and Goodwin’s wiki of the presentation, writingtools4all.pbwiki.com, has links to all the resources mentioned at ACTEM, additional links, and an audio file recorded during the workshop.

The resources presented and linked are all free online resources.

Just a couple from the many noted:
ReadWriteThink.org has a students materials page with over 50 online literacy tools. The Essay Map is an interactive graphic organizer with a high “cool” index.

Wordle.net creates “word clouds,” a visual depiction of a word list or passage of text. The more times a word is listed, the bigger its size.

ACTEM Conference

Mrs. Noble — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:15:49 +0000

Friday, October 17, I went to the annual conference of the Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine (ACTEM). It was a terrific conference day: good weather for travel, excellent workshop choices, and many opportunities to network with other Maine educators who use technology.

I attended these four workshops: Tech Integrator Roundtable, Putting Your Classroom “On the Grid” (all about blogging), Wiki Tools for Schools, and Online Writing Tools for Special Education.

You will see new posts with more details.

ACTEM presents a well run conference. If you have a chance to attend next year, mark your calendar for October 15-16, 2009.