Week 5 blog assignment

Mrs. Lori Elliot of Nixa, Missouri has a blog for her fourth-grade class. She has a well of information in her class blog... information for parents, pictures of class outings and projects and student comments about their experiences. You can visit her class's blog at http://teachers.emints.org/F406/elliott/

Mr. C of Noel Elementary has a blog for his class. He has video of his students performing their experiments and their reactions. Some of the experiments were making a boat made out of Ivory soap sink, making a boat out of aluminum foil that floats... and also to see how many marbles/pellets it could hold before it capsized. You can visit his class's blog at http://mrcsclassblog.blogspot.com

Week 3 Blog Assignment

ACCESS is a program set up by Alabama Gov. Boby Riley and State Superintendent of Education, Dr. Joseph B. Morton. It enables students access to instruction and courses that may not be able at their school. ACCESS stands for Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide. You can log on to http://alex.state.al.us/access for more information.

ACCESS provides instruction and coursework to students through the internet and/or videoconferencing by certified instructors called E-teachers. ACCESS provides advanced diploma courses, courses such as Latin or other languages that may not be available at the student's individual school, advanced placement, and remediation and/or supplemental resources and services. It also provides teacher with multimedia and other tools that will help them provide their students with the best instruction possible.

Log on to http://alex.state.al.us/access and check ACCESS out.

Week 4 Blog assigment

I just finished watching the Did You Know video for the fourth time. Wow! Technology is so cool! So many things jumped out at me. I thought that the country that was the richest; had the largest military; was the center of world business and finance; had the strongest education system; whose currency is the world standard of value; and had the highest standard of living would be China. I was surprised to learn that it was Great Britain.

I wasn't suprised that in 10 years it is predicted that China will be the number one English speaking country in the world. I was surprised that 100 % of 2006 college graduates in India speak English.

My son could reconfigure your hard drive by the time he was five. So, I wasn't surprised that by age for over 70% of four-year-olds in the U.S. have used a computer.

When I read that the amount of technology is doubling every two years and that, by 2010, it's supposed to double every 72 hours; I really took note! How are we and our children's educators going to prepare them for the future? How do we prepare them for technologies that don't even exist yet... but will very soon? Those are questions we have to find the answers to very quickly.

Watching the video left me in even more awe of our expanding technologies today. To think that any one of us can sit down at a computer and, in a matter of seconds, be connected to someone on the other side of the globe is just amazing to me. It also helps me realize that we are all part of the human race and share one planet. Well, one planet for now.