Provide teachers with technology tools, and they will invent the most remarkable uses for them.(first grade caterpillar study)

Our summer helpers have developed a killer room for the process of completing annual maintenance on our faculty and staff laptop computers. Note the ingenious use of the built-in projection system to get everyone through the long days!

Today, I led day one of our MacOS class. I was pleased that five teachers and staff members chose to spend time learning more about an operating system. I wish more would seek such professional develoment, since good practice with one's OS can make a huge difference. Four of the participants were switchng to a Mac at school or at home, and only one just wanted to better get to know their computer.I used an emergent curriculum approach, which worked well for day one. A brief introduction, prompt about challenges faced or problems solved, and then we spent the rest of the time rolling with the questions encountered as the participants toyed with their machines.We also discovered that any Mac loaner laptop user could control the screen of any other's, because we used shared login credentials for our shared machines! We will have to change the remote management preferences, finding a way to allow screen sharing when useful and prevent it when not.

I picked up this coffee mug to remind me to always create new ideas and content. In the darkest months of winter, warm beverages will remind me that the sea of content is best navigated when we participate in the creation of that information. May you create something today.

The online learning environment and community for the 50 Big Picture schools. I would like to learn more about the design of this portal.

Exemplifies care for the school.

Sixth grade students convert files from WMA and Garageband formats to make their Drupal podcast files.

tags: drupal, podcast, garageband, wma, mp3, aac, itunes

It's much smaller than I thought it would be. Yes, that's a 12 inch iBook adjacent! Over the summer, we will also pick up a couple of Asus eeePCs and see whether either will serve our lower school students well as classroom computers.

Analyzing golf swings on a newly-installed data projector.

Craig Newmark Skyped into our class, describing his support for OneVoice Movement.

How to hang a stack of paper on a magnetic surface (day well spent!).

We don't do late starts, and it appears that most families have made it here on time this morning.

The batteries in our mobile lab died, and now we will send these to the e-waste recycling and reclamation facility. Batteries are one troublesome issue we face as we consider the environmental impact of our computing programs.

If you would like to contact Richard, please leave a comment below or write richard (at) kassblog.com.

Apple's announcement of the MacBook is well-timed for us. Our seven language teachers are due to have their iBook G3s replaced this summer, according to our three-year laptop replacement cycle. We only bought three iBook G4s last summer to accommodate new faculty members. Last time, the language teachers received machines at the end of the cycle. This time, they will be on the leading edge! Jim Heynderickx (hey, that's the first time I spelled it correctly from memory!) now has a dilemma on his hands. We are in a safer position, only risking the purchase of seven new machines on this first-generation hardware. I wonder what proportion of Catlin Gabel ninth grade students will buy Apple?

Apple claims that the new machines are five times as fast as the iBook G4. Of course, we remember Apple's checkered history of performance promises, don't we!

I like that the MacBook is available in black. I will probably still buy white.

If the language teachers desire, we should be able to install Windows on these Macs as well. Our Microsoft education license agreement already requires us to count Macs in our total that we submit each year.

It recently took three months to get two Eiki data projectors back from the manufacturer's service department. What is going on with Eiki that it takes them that long to perform routine service? I am glad that, back in January, I used this opportunity to buy additional Chief mounts for our loaner data projectors, so that they could pinch hit for their larger cousins. Little did I know that they would be hanging from the ceiling for so long. As we open our new Sacramento St. building next year, with a ceiling-mounted data projector in each classroom, I will purchase a spare projector of the same model so that swaps may be easily performed at any time.

A Reuters article reports today that Americans have become less productive on account of distractive technologies.

Unlike a decade ago, U.S. workers are bombarded with e-mail, computer messages, cell phone calls, voice mails and the like, research showed.

Put another way, in 1994, 82 percent said they accomplished at least half their daily planned work but that number fell to 50 percent last year. A decade ago, 40 percent of workers called themselves very or extremely successful, but that number fell to just 28 percent.

"We think we're faster, smarter, better with all this technology at our side and in the end, we still feel rushed and our feeling of productivity is down," said Maria Woytek, marketing communications manager for Day-Timers, a unit of ACCO Brands Corp.

The last point seems key. The study did not actually claim that productivity is down, but rather that one's opinion of productivity has decreased compared to rising expectations. Nonetheless, the dangers are real. So, turn off your email and phone when you really need to focus on a task, and get off that blog editor!

I heard today that my NECC proposal was accepted. The session, titled 0 to 60 in Three Years: A New Online Community, will focus on the development of the insideUHS web site, taking advantage of existing cultural norms within the school, resources that were already in place, and free, open-source software.

Presenting at conferences is a great form of professional development. Just as you learn the material best when you teach it, I love being compelled to perform additional research in order to understand an idea well enough to present it to a diverse audience.

For this presentation, I would like to further explore theories around online community development. How consistent is our experience at UHS with prevalent theories on how people choose to participate in online communities? How do other schools foster participation in online communities? I would love to hear from those who are doing it or are familiar with the research.