I’ve been using the iPad more and more in the last few months. It is quite obviously a very handy way to deal with media (emails, movies, music, books, etc.). But beyond this convenience, I am slowly coming to see that there are some emergent aspects of using this Apple tablet. Since I have almost immediate access to all of my documents, photos, music, movies, and almost anything I can get online…the nature of how I deal with all of these disparate kinds of information is changing.

There are, however, a few short comings to using this as a primary computing platform. Typing…

I have the (wireless) Bluetooth keyboard, but I have gotten so used to Microsoft Word as my means of producing typewritten documents that changing over to any of the current Apple offerings really feels like a big step down. Nonetheless, I am going to try to create post (later this week) using only the iPad. I need almost any excuse to force myself to get used to typing with the iPad…

Luckily enough for me (and or you too, although for differing reasons…) I don’t deal with any complex or arcane formatting in this blog. This mean s that other than my mentioning it, you will not be able to distinguish whichever computing platform to create this future post…

Earlier this week I had my first bout with iPad problems. I was in the process of syncing the iPad with my NetBook. In the midst’s of upgrading the iPad OS something must have glitched in that the net result was my iPad turning into a brick. I have a lot of experience with catastrophic OS problems (I have had quite a few Windows machines over the years…), and the experience of seeing a booting computer fail to recognize any operating system still puts a cold twist in the pit of my stomach (i.e. it means that I will be dealing with some real problems and grief soon…).

Imagine my surprise when upon turning on the iPad for the first time after the failed OS upgrade that the iPad merely presented a graphic of connecting (through the interface cable) to iTunes. After connecting the iPad back to the NetBook and having iTunes automatically instantiate, I was presented with a dialog box stating that I merely need to click the restore button (the only button on the screen). This reloaded the latest OS (but wiped my system otherwise). Upon finishing this job, I was then asked whether I wanted to restore my latest backup (from about 25 minutes earlier)…presto. I had all of my data and profile back!

At this point I should state that as a long time Microsoft user, I was elated! Maybe the Apple Fanboi’s have something after all!

This is where I can add a couple of reasonable criticisms of this ‘fix’ to my system. Everything I just stated is true, and as such it still makes me feel quite amazed (if only as a long time Window’s user). BUT, there were still a few (small) snags. You see I had to reload every app I had on my iPad… While this may be reasonably justified and make sense to those who are deeply into apple methods, I found this to be a bit of a surprise (to say the least). Coming off of the recent elation I felt about getting everything back, I suppose that having to go through and re-download every app was a small penance. I would have only wished that I had a screen-shot of every page on my previous iPad installation, if only to ensure that I get every app back. That is my advice to current iPad users (take some screen shots of every page you have).

Screen-shots are actually easy to do, just hold down the button (the button) while also holding down the power button on the ‘top’ of the iPad. You should hear a click (like a camera), and you will have a screen shot in your photo album.

For good or bad, this is (so far) the only advice I have for iPad users…

 

EverNote is an online application, computer program (PC and Mac), and an iPhone and iPad application which allows you to keep what you find. You can clip pieces of web pages, bookmark whole pages, enter any document from your computer, record audio, video, or pictures into EverNote, you can scan pictures and documents, Literally anything you can get into a computer can go into EverNote.

While this is stupendous enough, the real value in EverNote is that all of these different forms of information can be searched. In EverNote you can even search for text in pictures. All of these abilities are also synced across every EverNote installation you may have (I have it on two different computers, and an iPhone). This means that if you enter hundreds of PDF files from your computer, you would also have immediate access to all of these files on your phone.

As you could imagine, EverNote is a pretty handy tool for a wealth of things. I do almost all of my research for teaching and history issues (a hobby of mine), I even do research for this blog using EverNote. There is an EverNote freeware version with a 50 megabyte limit, or the premium version which has unlimited storage and a 500 megabyte upload per month limit for $5.00 @ month. My point is that you can try this out for free, just to see if it has any value for you.

To give you a better idea of the number of things you could use EverNote for I have a number of links:

http://markstout.blogspot.com/2009/10/many-uses-of-evernote.html

http://www.christianpf.com/how-to-use-evernote-creative-uses/

http://storecrowd.com/blog/creative-evernote/

http://www.inquisitr.com/2179/evernote-why-it-will-make-it-20-awesome-ways-to-use-it/

http://www.andrewcmaxwell.com/2009/11/100-different-evernote-uses/

One of the biggest advantages of using EverNote is to enter a lot of information from your computer and access it in a very simple way on your phone (or even iPad!). You could use EverNote to help in becoming a completely paperless person. You could use EverNote for your tax records (including every receipt you have…kept in a pristine, rational storage spot), you could use your smart phone to take pictures and audio at a car accident (for later documentation…just in case).

If you were to get the ScanDock, you could use any smart phone to directly scan any document into EverNote. The ultimate list of uses for this program might be endless…

 

If you have read a couple of my previous posts, go might be able to assume that I am interested in getting rid of a lot of paper, and that, more generally, I am interested in simplifying my life. I saw a review of the ScanDock (a collapsible cardboard ‘scanner’ platform which uses the iPhone to capture documents). Unlike the slew of reviews which you can find on the internet, I have been using a ScanDock to render all of my documents into digital forms.

I think that this little platform is a great idea, and it is priced for almost everyone (e.g. $14.99 USD + shipping). With this tool I can directly enter these pictures into my EverNote account, which allows me to search pictures for directly for print and numbers (this saves me a lot of time).

Here is the link:

http://www.ponoko.com/showroom/kyleakoch/scandock-for-iphone-2703

And here is a quote from Kyle Koch (the inventor and seller of the ScanDock):

When I got my iPhone last year I loved having everything important in one place, and the ability to get rid of unnecessary devices, documents and information I kept with me. I would frequently snap photos of class assignments printed on copy paper so I wouldn’t have to worry about losing them. The documents normally came out pretty clear, but it was tough to keep still while taking the pictures. I set out to make something that would ensure clean, consistent pictures of documents taken with the iPhone.

If you have a smart phone (an iPhone in particular), this platform can really make an EverNote application have a lot more value! While there are plenty of good tools out there to capture web pages to read later (e.g. read it later, or instapaper), and there are some good bookmarking tools (Delicious, Diigo, et. al.), EverNote can do these things too, but being able to integrate all of the documents you have, including PDF’s, as well as almost anything you can take pictures of, write notes about, or even record audio… There are quite a few possibilities with this program. I have an iPhone app, an online application (via Firefox), and applications residing on all of my PC’s. This allows me to have all of these different applications automatically synced together.

 

I have too much stuff, we all have too much stuff, and with this in mind I have been working to fix my situation. I used to have well over a thousand Cd’s (now the equivalent rests on a couple external hard drives), I used to have hundreds of DVD’s (their equivalents are also resting on those same drives). These simple actions have cleared out a lot of the volume and weight of the totality of my ‘stuff’, but there is still more I can do.

As with most people, over time, my life was starting to take on more and more complexity, and much of it related to things which shouldn’t have carried that much oppressive weight upon my life. Consequently, I have done some pre3tty simple and commonplace things like migrate much of the paperwork, documentation, bills, and invoices into the realm of the computer/internet world. This is often the stopping place for many people, and to be honest, this is a good place to stop, in that to migrate all of your banking and credit cards onto the internet certainly is convenient. I decided to go a bit further…

I ran across a few articles online about ‘going paperless’. IF you look today, you might find hundreds of blogs and websites covering this simple idea. I even found a blog which covered the idea of making a school classroom (presumably a high school classroom…) into a paperless environment. In any case, I have read through many of these sites, and have learned a lot of the tactical skills involved in becoming more adept in this quest.

Here is where I start to differ from some of these well intended people. If you look, you will see lots of almost religious paeans toward how ‘going paperless’ will save some trees… This seems to be the primary, and all encompassing reason for doing this… I don’t get it. Since the trees used for pulp paper production are part of a well regulated industry, ‘going paperless’ for this reason is about the same as going breadless in order to save some of the wheat plants…

I am getting into a more and more paperless existence simply because it is making my life better, simpler, and allows me to have more control over all of the little documents which are part of everyone’s life, as well as do rid myself of all of what would otherwise be a lot of clutter. I am a bit agnostic about saving some trees, at least in the sense that the actions I have just alluded to. Otherwise, I am for trees, I even celebrate Arbor Day (it was on June 1^st…). Beyond the tree issue, I have succeeded in ridding myself of other things.

Yesterday I mentioned that sooner or later almost every piece of media we own will ultimately be rendered into some form of digital data. I am working to get there as quickly as I can, since there are a number of real, practical advantages. First of all, for me, is the idea that with all of these forms of data at your fingertips, that there will be some emergent forms of using these differing forms of information and entertainment.

This can come in many forms, for instance, even now; I have access to all of the documents which contain all of my ‘important information’ on every computer I own. They all are automatically kept in synchronization and allow me to have access to my car insurance, or my college transcripts at a moment’s notice (anywhere).

In the near future I might be able to do this will almost all of my music, movies, magazines, blogs, and books…all on the same platform. So, as a few questions to throw out there…would this make all of one’s personal media less valuable or more valuable (by virtue of its ubiquity)? Will there be some new forms of using all of these different forms of information (read: somewhere beyond mash-ups…)? Will this lead to more and more people taking on a more ‘peripatetic’ personal style?

http://www.impactlab.com/2010/04/15/going-paperless-is-not-as-green-as-we-might-think/

http://unclutterer.com/2008/02/18/going-paperless/

http://lifehacker.com/5330558/the-complete-guide-to-going-paperless

http://smallnotebook.org/2008/09/24/going-paperless/

 

There are a lot of topics to give thought to in the area of education. Obviously, there are a few which need this effort in order to understand them, but there are quite a few more which need some thought about understanding why… One of these ideas (sic) is one which has been bothering me for decades.

Long ago when I was an incoming freshman to college, I was impelled, as a matter of course in many of my classes to have to withstand the teachers constant carping about how poorly prepared we were for college. It is important to realize that this was no ad hominem attack upon us, or our capabilities, it was a critique of some of the glaring deficiencies in how we were prepared by our high schools. Imagine my thoughts when as a returning undergraduate (only a few years ago) to have to endure hearing almost exactly the same thing in many classes. The big difference here was that I could now see what the college instructors were talking about!

Our K-12 public school system is supposed to help prepare our children to make it in the greater world when they graduate. For some students, they do a good enough job, but for many of the students in the middle (i.e. no real problems, medium grades, and some inclination to try to get a college degree…), things are tough.

I spent a lot of my time (during my last trip through college) trying to help fellow students to become more adept in the skills needed to get through college. Foremost of these skills would have to be note taking. Some high schools, especially for students in AP or IB classes (advanced placement…)are driven to develop some of these skills since it is all about gathering and digesting a lot of information. Not all students avail themselves of these classes (they’re pretty hard!).

To take notes in a class lecture there are some subsidiary skills needed in order to get the job done. First, you need to work to develop some ability in critical listening. This is a specific skill in taking time to carefully listen to what the lecturer is actually saying, and as a note taker, to be able to effectively paraphrase the gist of what is being stated. This is a skill which takes time to develop, and as such, high schools should be spending time to help their students to develop these budding skills.

Critical listening is analogous to critical reading skills, in that you need to try to be scrupulously objective and skeptical of every fact, and every inference. A part of these skills, as well as a practical part of note taking is the need to ask questions (if only in your notes). Generally speaking these skills are at or near the top of the Bloom’s Taxonomy hierarchy of intellectual skills.

There are quite a number of methods of writing notes, here is a list containing some information regarding a few of them, most notable the Cornell note taking method. I can see that this method (one I have never used for myself) may be a good method with which to start to develop some of the skills needed to take ‘good’ notes. I should mention that these note taking methods work well with critical reading too…

This is something which I was forced to realize several decades ago, and I think that these skills may be at least as valuable as some of the subject which students may feel compelled to use them with. To be able to objectively gather the import of what someone is saying (to writing), and then to be able to ask critical questions would seem to me to be an effective path towards some real wisdom…

 

I am left thinking that it is some sort of an open secret that all bloggers have to post something about the iPad. I am not immune to this secret ‘law’ so, here is my perspective about the iPad in education.

The iPad certainly looks cool, it looks like it should be a prop on one of the too numerous Star Trek franchises. It will certainly be handy thing to have in one’s house. Just think one over-large iPod Touch which will allow you to read books and magazines, watch movies, surf the web, and deal with e-mail. It certainly looks like it will be an upgrade to any interior decoration scheme…

I have heard many people on almost all of the other blogs on the internet allude3 to the ‘fact’ that the next iteration of the software…or the next generation of hardware will allow this ‘revolutionary’ new toy/tool to:

· Include a camera

· Include a card reader (for transfer of data, and dealing with most digital cameras)

· Have a huge impact on the application store (i.e. there will be many, many iPad centric applications out there soon… really!)

· Include some sort of a microphone, and a face mounted webcam to allow for video chatting

· Include a USB (3.0?) post to allow for more peripherals

· Increase battery life… beyond whatever the advertising fluff says about it

· And most importantly, to make it a worthwhile tool to create content…it needs a real keyboard…no matter how uncouth it would look to the Star Trek lovers and apple fanboys.

I imagine that you can see that some of these points could be meant as criticisms of this new tool as an aide to classrooms everywhere. I would readily admit that this 1.5 pound package is certainly a better thing to have to carry than all of the 10+ pound textbooks which fill book bags in high schools and colleges everywhere. This generation of students may be overweight, but they are being taught how to be amateur power lifters with regard to the sizes of modern textbooks!

The jury is out as to whether the backlit color display is better for reading books than the electronic ink displays on the Amazon Kindles or the Barnes & Noble Nook… So, as far as I am concerned the iPad may have some potential, but almost all of it is either unrealized to hypothetical.

Most of the really positive reviews I have skimmed through as to the utility if the iPad in education seem to be talking about the iPad as a concept. I would probably agree with that, but this is only confusing to those who are interested in this specific piece of technology…not what it could be in several years.

Of course, there are some subtler advantages to the iPad. I see in many middle and high schools carts filled with Macbooks (about 1K$ or more each). A stripped down iPad is ½ the price! They both could access the ‘cloud’ just as easily and when the latest version of HTML is in general use (HTML 5.0), the lack of flash media coverage may allow for practical web-viewing for students.

So, as a conclusion to this seemingly obligatory blog post, I don’t see the need to spend money on this for at least a couple years.

 

There is a lot of technology which teacher almost all teachers are familiar with. From blackboards and chalk to whiteboards and markers, mimeographs to printers, to computers and projectors in the classroom. Even if you only use pencils and paper, you are using some form of technology.

There are a few hardware and software additions I am recommending…because they actually work, and are worth the effort to develop a few new skills. For hardware, the first thing on my list is 3Pinteract’s Wiimote based interactive presentation system. Their seamless implementation of this technology (you just follow some very simple directions, and it works)allows you to have a complete replacement for an interactive ‘smartboard’ for about 7 times less money (yes, SEVEN times less money!). This is such a no-brainer solution for any classroom; I am amazed that I don’t hear more about this… I have been using their portable system for couple of weeks now, and the more I use it the more impressed I am with the quality of their product.

The next hardware I have tried in the last several months which I feel is a great adjunct to teaching social studies is the 3D Connexion Space Navigator. This tool is a USB connected Google Earth (and many other programs…) controller with six degrees of freedom. This tool allows you to, essentially, fly in Google Earth. Once you try this controller you will not ever want to use Google Earth without it. There is a one or two hour learning curve to re-learn how to navigate in Google Earth with this controller. After this break-in time things happen much more smoothly than you could ever have happen with a mere mouse. If you have any intentions of creating a recorded ‘fly through’ in Google Earth this tool is essential.

http://www.3pinteract.co.nz/

http://www.3dconnexion.com/

There is a lot of software which teachers can use; I see huge numbers of sites which try to sell products and services for teachers online. From my perspective, the vast majority of this ‘pay to play’ stuff is not worth the money. There are, however, plenty of completely free tools which most teachers should be familiar with. First off, my perspective is that of a social studies teacher, and as a consequence, much of my perspectives are not particularly effective or important for elementary school teachers, or teachers of other specialty areas (e.g. Math…).

As for the tools you should be aware of there are: Firefox or Google Chrome as a web browser. Both of these browsers have a plug-in architecture which allows you to customize the browser to the way that you want. There are also plenty of Google products (all free…) which you really should be aware of (and probably already use). Some of these tools are Google Docs (their free, online word processor which allows for collaboration), Google Reader (a great online RSS reader), and (for me a deal breaker) Google Earth. This download (e.g. Google Earth) is a tool such that I really can’t imagine how or why you would even attempt to teach many topics in Geography or History without this tool.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html

http://www.google.com/reader/

http://docs.google.com

http://earth.google.com/

So, with some knowledge of these tools, I have found some others online applications which I think are worth a second look. Diigo is a social bookmarking tool much like Delicious.com, but with the added ability to add in highlighting to specific web-pages (in yellow, just like in most of the texts books you own), the ability to add in something like online post-it notes to pages too. You can create lists of bookmarks and publish them to your students (for specific topics where you want to get them started in some research…). With these added web-page effects student collaboration starts to become a more natural thing in the classroom.

http://www.diigo.com/

Wiki-spaces, a free online Wiki site, can make the creation and maintenance of Wikis for a class quite easy. There is no real need to develop HTML skills (like some of the earlier Wiki developments over the years) to the degree that creating a class syllabus, a class calendar, or even a place to deposit student created content works about the same way as if you were to use Microsoft Word…easy.

http://www.wikispaces.com/

As with class Wikis, there are many places which provide blogging platforms and free hoisting for teachers who Edu-blog. Blogging is self evidently something which I may be too biased about to say whether many other teachers should have a class blog, or allow for the creation of student blogs (I am for it!). This is a short list of three of the bigger services specifically for teachers. Obviously there are many other ways to blog (i.e. look at sites like this site…ahem…right here!) The actual costs involved in hosting your own blog are much less than most people would imagine!

http://edublogs.org/

http://www.google.com/educators/p_blogger.html

http://www.21classes.com/

Finally, this finishes my reviewing teaching hardware and technology (for the mean time). Of course, this is by no means a comprehensive look at all of the tools available to teachers, keep your own eyes open!

 

Literally every teacher I have known in the last twenty years knows what Microsoft PowerPoint is. Most of them have, and are writing presentations using that warhorse of a program. When I worked in the private sector, almost every manager I ever dealt with used PowerPoint. I have been subjected to almost innumerable PowerPoint presentations in the last ten years… Most of these presentations were similar, in an almost homogenized PowerPoint manner…page after page of bullet points interspersed with clip art. There has to be a better way for teaches to present information.

As I mentioned in passing yesterday, just because something is ‘high tech’ doesn’t mean that it is the right tool. For instance, merely using chalk on a blackboard is the right solution to dynamically explain ideas, other times a more cogent PowerPoint presentation is the best answer. From a post of mine a month ago, I brought up Prezi as an alternative to PowerPoint. It is effectively free, it is much more dynamic (for the viewers), is (so far) comparatively rare (and thus more interesting to students), and gives the presenter (read: teacher) another means to inject energy into what might have been otherwise a list of bullet points.

I created this Prezi presentation (online) in about 5 minutes. They can run on any system which has flash, can be embedded (as seen here) on websites, wikis, and blogs, and the presentation is quite easily manipulated and edited to allow for re-use of your content.

There are many more sites which purport to provide tutorials on how to best use PowerPoint. From the many sloppy, and sometimes obtuse presentations I have seen from my seat in a classroom, as well as in management meetings, I can see the need to work to develop some effective skills in the art of presenting ideas regardless of the format one may use (whether PowerPoint, Prezi, or the old blackboard). Here are some Prezi and PowerPoint links.

Prezi:

http://prezi.com/

http://prezi.com/learn/

PowerPoint:

http://www.electricteacher.com/tutorial3.htm

http://www.fgcu.edu/support/office2007/ppt/index.asp

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/cr100654571033.aspx

As a final point, while it is certainly easy to get lost in the weeds, as you develop skills in using these tools, when it comes down to it, YOU are making the presentation not the screen behind you. This is just a tool…

 

Since I intend to cover some technology tools for teachers (especially social studies teachers),I want to preface all of these reviews with some thoughts about how we, as teachers address technology. There are several points of view I have seen in the last couple of years (since I became a teacher), the first, and most common one is that of being a passive technophobe. This all too common of an attitude for teachers is quite obviously predicated upon the fact that most teachers, even new teachers who could have had some instruction in technology…didn’t, and the rest of them seemingly feel quite put upon with regard to having to learn so many new tricks. The second, much smaller group is comprised of technophiles, people who innately love change, and have taken the internet, and computers to heart. This isn’t to say that they all embrace all of the technology implicit in computers/internet, but they are willing to learn.

The last group is one I find the most interesting, the principled technophobes. This very small group of people seems to have nothing against technology; it’s just that they don’t see it as any sort of a panacea for the ills in education. I can understand that, since if you look over some of the education / internet sites and blogs out there it almost feels like you are in the presence of the newly converted (in a religious sense). A lot of this hysteria is over the top.

Technology, and the new technologies which teachers are adapting to, or are being confronted by, is here to stay. I do think that these new tools should be seen as what they are…that is, tools. These tools are not the second coming, will not make bored and inattentive students into gleaming examples of how the world can be fixed with just money.

When I was in college to become a social studies teacher, one of my favorite teachers was Professor Mike Garret (formerly of Bemidji State University in Minnesota). He was an old social studies teacher, and his point of view was that while new technology was a great adjunct to teaching, if you couldn’t teach a class with one piece of chalk while standing on a tar parking lot, you couldn’t really teach. This could be best summed up as really ‘old school’. There are some worthwhile implications in this point of view; in essence you should embrace the new, and keep the old. Just because you can teach a class which has projects based upon creating YouTube videos doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep up the skills to…draw a world map on a blackboard in less than one minute.

Another important point to make about the use of technology in the classroom is that is shouldn’t really be the focus of anything other than topics in teacher preparations. There are far more important things for teachers to deal with, and I am not talking about classroom management techniques or the politics of No Child Left Behind either. Especially for high school, the notion that students should be learning how to think is one that has sadly fallen from view, with the sole exception being that the topic heading is occasionally brought up to bolster some other points about educational quality. I have talked about Bloom’s Taxonomy, about the meaninglessness of having students shut up in class and work alone of ‘worksheets’. I found an interesting article about the same problem in our colleges that relates to my point of view:

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_edu/problem.html

But you know what they come home showing me? Worksheets where they got everything right. That’s what they think they’re SUPPOSED to be proud of. That they can sit, and concentrate, and finish what they’re doing (they don’t get to go out to recess unless they do), and get everything right. Well, dammit, THAT’s not thinking. That’s learning to be efficient and get the answers you’re supposed to get. Thinking is something else entirely. It’s being curious, and being wrong most of the time, and maybe, just maybe coming up with something you’ve made that you’re proud of and pleased with, something all your own (even if it turns out later that someone else had thought of it too).

I suppose as a final point, I worked in several other industries before becoming a teacher, and that the broad canons of what professionalism represents is almost always based upon keeping up with the state of the art, and that this action falls upon you, not the place you work at. I suspect that teachers may be learning these sorts of lessons sooner or later…

 

I’ve made some lists of the tools I use, but today I want to talk about some of the ubiquitous tools that almost all teachers either have or have access to. As with any job, it is always worthwhile to take care of the tools you have. In the computer world, the tools we use change faster than many are comfortable adapting to…sorry…that’s the way our new online world works (i.e. faster than you…get used to it!).

Most teachers that I am aware of have a PC in their room with a copy of Microsoft Office. Some are comfortable with PowerPoint, other with Word, and a few with Excel. I think that all three programs are quite nice (if bloated and very expensive!). I have a copy of office on my laptop only because this is the ubiquitous tool of teaching, otherwise I would have been perfectly happy with Open Office (a free office suite…).

I made a short list of some of the tools that most middle school and high school teachers should be aware of: The aforementioned Microsoft Office ($$), Diigo (free), Prezi (mostly free…), EverNote (free), Google Docs (free) and some general knowledge about Wikis and Blogs. There are certainly many more tools that teachers use and have access to in the classroom, but this is merely a beginning. I have made some link lists of some help, support, and lesson links for these tools. I would suggest checking them out even if you consider yourself to be a master of any of these tools (actually, if you consider yourself a master of any of these tools, you would probably be more than aware of all of these sites…).

This post actually gets to the core of one of the main reasons I have this blog…I see so many people, teachers, students, and seniors who seem to muddle along with less than efficient tool computer tool usage…most of the time this is because of some of the biggest problems which affect people adapting to computers… fear and laziness…

I often see teachers react to these sorts of professional ‘impositions’ in a less than helpful manner. I can empathize with someone who has whole categories of technology thrust upon them with little or no real support of help. This doesn’t even start to get into the more problematic areas of some teachers already having some antipathy towards technology on a personal level. I said I empathize, but to actually be supportive of this selfish notion would be to suggest that we go back to drowning witches and other ‘luddite’ sort of devolution. It certainly doesn’t sound like a point of view that could be supported by a professional teacher…

So, here are the links to check (especially for you luddites with computer access!)

2007 word http://linkli.st/riehler/3l5wt

2007 Excel http://linkli.st/riehler/7O2fl

2007 PowerPoint http://linkli.st/riehler/8rMeE

Diigo http://linkli.st/riehler/5Ksms

Prezi http://linkli.st/riehler/8FuwF

EverNote http://linkli.st/riehler/1eNIk

Wiki http://linkli.st/riehler/4toCn

Google Docs http://linkli.st/riehler/9nak4