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The Whiteboards

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A pair of white surfaces that erase easily and can temporarily hold some form of analogue data for a period of time. Simple enough. They are reusable and don’t take up more space than they already do. The information they hold can be likened to the days in grade school figuring out a math problem (long division like) on a piece of paper with a trusty #2 pencil. Or, a more likely scenario for those who read these posts, a small surface on the outside of your dorm room door where people leave notes, draw inappropriate pictures, or “accidentally” use … Continue reading →

More Dangers of Technology

As an educator there is nothing more important to me than transmitting knowledge. The name of the game, essentially, is a transfer of information between individuals. This is not simply a one-way street as I often learn a great deal from my students. The general flow, however, is one from the teacher to the students. Anything that aids that flow is helpful… and anything that hinders it is counter-productive. Great technologies have aided that flow. The printing press enabled the creation of affordable books for the masses. These books transmitted knowledge and thus aided education. While book costs are sometimes … Continue reading →

The Move to Technology

Technology is a good thing. Airplanes fly, e-mail doesn’t require a stamp, and finding information doesn’t require a trip to the library (or even the bookshelf) because of the internet and the computer. In education the move to technology has also brought many improvements and benefits to older ways of doing things (I would not have completed a masters thesis if not for the modern word processor as a typewriter would have driven me mad). There are downsides to technology though. Oftentimes digital presentation software will replace the skill of speaking (both for teacher lectures and student presentations). When I … Continue reading →

Technology in the Classroom

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Technology is everywhere in today’s world. Cell phones, MP3 players, Ipods, and the Internet are the norm. Education is no exception. Most schools are now equipped with computer labs. Technology has now made its way into the academic curriculum. Along with math, English, science, social studies, and reading, teachers are now teaching technology skills. Many children are well capable of navigating through computer games when they begin school. Others use the Internet on a daily basis. Students have email addresses and computers at home. However, there is more to technology than surfing the web. Children need to know how to … Continue reading →

The Home Network

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One of my side interests is technology. I’m specifically interested in software. I’ve explained before why this came about. The quick recap is that my best guess is that my interest in software (specifically free/libre software) stemmed from not being able to spend money on the proprietary counterparts (in addition to an affinity with the ideals of the movement). This turned out to be a fortunate circumstance to be in because I was able to learn (at essentially no cost) a great deal about programming and computers. Enough that I’m now a confident user, experimenter, and all around handyman when … Continue reading →

Digital Notetaking, Planning, and Writing

One of my failures as a person is organization. It’s not that I don’t get things done (I do) and it isn’t that I don’t have a system (it’s mostly piles and stacks of recent tasks), but it’s mainly that I’d like to be better at it. Who doesn’t want to be better organized? I’m a technology junkie (I install a new operating system at least once a week and a new application multiple times a day) and that means that in the search for an application that I feel can work I go through lots and lots of applications … Continue reading →

Living With Color Blindness

Think for a moment about how many things in life rely on color. From getting dressed in the morning (making sure your clothes match) to driving to work (and reading traffic signals), color is all around us! Compensating for an inability to see colors can be easy in some ways and not so easy in others. As far as traffic lights go, a person can learn the order of the three lights — red at the top, yellow in the middle, and green at the bottom — and watch for which one is lit. Even if you can’t see the … Continue reading →