I am a Broker of Expertise (who knew?)

I was selected to be a member of this pilot project, which actually begins tomorrow. I am all about closing the achievement gap and raising overall student achievement. Let's get started!

School reform efforts have mostly been conducted on an individual school or district basis. However, in these times of scarce resources, it is imperative that a state as large and complex as California learns to share sound educational solutions to common issues. The on-line nature of the resources and the community of practice are key to leveraging available resources, answering the questions posed in the pilot work, and developing a system to assist California’s teachers for the long-term challenges ahead.

In the past two years, foundations interested in helping teachers by providing them the resources they need to do their work more effectively have been developing the vision. Working through the California Department of Education (CDE), these efforts have taken the form of an initiative known as Brokers of Expertise. Those at the heart of the initiative understand that teachers and administrators around the state – in addition to others charged with supporting K-12 education, have developed expertise in diverse areas. Making the exchange of this expertise easier, along with providing easily searchable, high-quality resources, are the goals of the Brokers of Expertise initiative.

The platform for providing these resources and access to each other are being tested in a pilot. This community pilot will examine how teachers use the resources, how they interact with each other, and how useful teachers find the resources and these connections to be. Closing the achievement gap and raising overall student achievement across our large and diverse state is the overarching goal.

Revolutionary New Laptop

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Astronomy Night: We Went to Mars!

Google Earth In the Classroom

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

- Putt's Law

Faces: Face Detection and Face Recognition in iPhoto

I am having way too much fun (and spending way too much time) playing around with my new iPhoto '09.

According to the Apple website, "iPhoto uses face detection to identify faces of people in your photos and face recognition to match faces that look like the same person."

Here's how it works: First iPhoto analyzes all of the photos in your library. Then you put a name to a face in a couple of photos, and iPhoto suggests a set of possible matches which you then can confirm with a click. iPhoto uses the information to sift through your photo library and find more potential matches.

Once you’ve added names, the Faces view shows a corkboard with a snapshot for each person you’ve named. When you click any snapshot, you see all the confirmed and suggested photos of that person.

It is kind of an addicting activity. Most of the time it gets the face right once you've entered a few manually. What amazed me is that it found and correctly identified one picture of Daughter #4 when she was a young child. Pretty cool.

I love the corkboard with a close-up snapshot of all of my favorite people!

Glorious Google Goods Galore

I have been a Google products fan for awhile. Now my task (for my graduate course) is to write about these tools. Where to begin?

First of all, of course, is the fact that this blog is made possible by Google Blogger. Then, there are the websites I have made using Google Pages (no longer available, but Google Sites works too). I really like Google Calendar, which I use both for my personal (rather busy) calendar, and for the calendar on our school website. I use Google Docs to collaborate with my colleagues and save important files. I plan to also start using it with my students. GMail seems to be the only e-mail I can use to send outgoing mail on my phone, and it is the key to using all these other Google products.

Google Reader helps me keep up with my daughter's Blog posts. Google Earth is downloaded onto my computer and is one of my students' favorite programs. I really do think Google Maps is the best of all the map/directions websites, and I used it for our school website. My personal homepage uses iGoogle, and I love the fact that when I travel and am on some other computer, I can go to a page that looks just like my good old laptop. Google Toolbar is a must for my browser; it is a big time saver.

Picasa is a great way to store and share photos. I use it all the time. Although I can't use YouTube at school, it is a great way to post a video I have made for friends and family to see. I have told lots of people about Goog-411 to save money on those annoying Directory Assistance charges. Finally, we all know that the word "Google" is a synonym for searching for something on the web. (My students tend to call out "Google it" when I confess ignorance of a certain factoid.) Google search gets better all the time. I really like the image search and the news search as well.

So there you have it. There are actually a few Google products which I have not yet used. I probably should check them out, because all the others are fantastic tools. What is YOUR favorite Google product?

Dear Congress,

Please support President Elect Obama's stated intention to provide substantial funding for education technology as part of the forthcoming economic recovery package. In a recent speech, he declared: "To give our children the chance to live out their dreams in a world that's never been more competitive, we will equip tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries. We'll provide new computers, new technology, and new training for teachers so that students in Chicago and Boston can compete with kids in Beijing for the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future." I urge you to work with President Elect Obama to implement these goals.

We have an opportunity to modernize classrooms, create jobs, foster a more college and workforce ready student population, and provide economic growth in a technology sector that will be better able to serve the growing global education market. We need to transform classrooms into technology-rich environments, provide appropriate professional development and IT support to educators, and prepare our students for the 21st Century job market.

Let's have both an economic stimulus as well as a true investment in the education of our students.

Web 2.0 in Case You Didn't Know

I found this interesting. So I'm sharing it with you.

Me in 50 Years?

Inspiring Software

I'm using Inspiration to design my site map. It's a fun one to play with! Here's an example of a template. There is a 30-day free trial version you can download.

My (Our) New Toy - and you could win one!

Bought a FlipVideo at Costco today. Had to decide between white, black, orange and pink. Daughter #2 and I will be sharing this cool toy, I mean tool, as we are both in need of one for our graduate school assignments. Daughter #1 already has one for her vlog work, and you can enter her contest to win one if you want.

Yet Another Website I Made

This one to begin my Master's Program: Click here.

So far so good. I spent two hours "in class" today sitting at Panera in order to use their free wi-fi, since I can't get past my school district's firewall for the live webcast. Not bad, really. They have good iced tea...

A Very Interesting Video - Shift Happens