Sorry for my long absence from the blog.  I’ve started a new full-time position (away from education, about which I have some mixed feelings) and it’s really been consuming all of my time.  I’m not shutting the site down and I still have plans for its future.  I’m still working towards my Master’s in EdTech through Concordia Wisconsin, and I have lots to say about education in the 21st Century.

For right now, I’m going to try to get back into the blog with biweekly Web 2.0 for the classroom pieces beginning next week.

God bless as you finish up your school years.

The following was our program for today’s National Day of Prayer.  I took most of the information straight from http://nationaldayofprayer.org/. (more…)

I have a feeling that most of us have probably been where I have this past year.  That is what we know as life!  I have been busy with school work, graduate class work, family, church, solving world hunger, and personal time.  Okay, maybe not solving world hunger but you get the idea…  Don’t we all just let life consume us at times.  I am slowly getting back to all the things I enjoy after having a new little one join our family in October of this last year.  Wow how I forgot how life changes with babies, but I love it!

This has me thinking that we all have changes that happen and we all find ways to adjust and re-align our life.  This happens constantly in education.  Changes.  New curriculum, new staff, new students, snow days, sick days, new years, new technologies.  The list could go on and on.  How we deal with it is what makes the difference.  We can try and keep things the same or we can try and adapt and work with the circumstances we are given.  In today’s world, technology is making a place and this is changing education.   The focus is not technology, the focus is on how to reach our digital learners.  I posted recently at my Lutheran Tech Teacher blog a little more about this after attending the LEA convocation.  Feel free to check it out.  Because so much is changing, it is hard to keep up with everything.  Find one thing you can try.  Learn it well, use it well and add more as you go.  Make little changes that you feel comfortable with and you may surprise yourself!   Happy Learning!

Last week I got to participate in my first ever LEA convocation, something that only happens every 3 years. (more…)

How many of you heard about  Natalie Munroe?  The title were her own words after a colleague told her that students found her blog, where she talks negatively about them.  She then feels violated when reporters want to know what is going on, and that her blog was of no importance.  DOES SHE EVER HAVE IT WRONG! (more…)

Apologies for being a bit late with this article.  The weeks around the holidays seem to get more hectic with each passing year.  With that in mind, I am anticipating only one or, possibly, two more Web 2.0 columns before the new year.  I appreciate your understanding.

This week’s article will be taking a look at one of the most useful free websites: the Internet Archive.  The Internet Archive (IA) project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that is building an online digital archive of websites and other cultural artifacts.  Access to all of this is being provided free of charge to anyone who wants it.

IA is probably best known for the Wayback Machine, a searchable index of 150 billion web pages collected since the very beginnings of the World Wide Web.  The Wayback Machine is an excellent tool to locate information from defunct websites.  The index often includes many versions of a given site, gathered over a period of time.  I’ve used it both to recover data from lost sites and to find information that was once on a previous version of a website.  There are a few drawbacks to the Wayback Machine, however.  The most significant is that websites that make heavy use of dynamically generated content (php, Flash, Java, etc.) may not function as expected.  This is because, while the Wayback Machine might contain a site’s various pages, it may not contain the content from the site’s database that belongs on those pages.

The IA isn’t just the Wayback Machine, though.  It also contains a significant collection of video, music, audio, texts, and software.  Usage rights to the artifacts vary, but most are nearly unrestricted, allowing content to be shared, printed, and used in most non-commercial settings.  Artifacts are divided into various collections and contain things like Project Gutenberg, the Universal Library Project, live music concerts from hundreds of artists, radio programs, including Old Time Radio programs from the early 1900s, open source, freeware, and shareware software archives, classic television programming, full length feature films, and more.  Content is hosted in a variety of formats and many artifacts are offered in several versions.

The Archive is an amazing collection of often otherwise difficult to locate culturally significant artifacts that cover a variety of eras.  Content is offered in a multitude (more…)

One last go before drastic measures.

Trying this again….