Backing Tracking

I felt I should go back and record a few things I have already done in the past six months. Back in March of the 2004-2005 school year, I created a survey (1 hour) on Advancedsurvey.com. The survey was comprised of questions about math software, websites, and MS Office. Eleven of the twelve math teachers in the department responded. They wanted to know more about Geometry Sketchpad and Fathom.

Partly because the teachers wanted to know more about GSP and because I wanted to learn more I signed up for a workshop (35 hours) the week after school ended in June at the DCIU. One of my goals was to be able to recreate a ferris wheel activity for a collegue of mine. I spent time working on it on my own (4 hours) then at the end of the workshop I asked the instructor if he could help me. We spent another 2 hours. We started playing with the action buttons and the properties. WOW did I learn a lot about that! We were sooo close, but both of us were tired. We were able to figure out more than 75% of the action buttons.

The following week, the last week in June, I went to the NECC conference in Philadelphia (27 hours). I took the train in each day starting on Tuesday. At the conference I went to a session called Holy Handhelds which was hosted by Seaford HS in Delaware. I got really excited about PDA's. They said that there would be a workshop in Salisbury MD on July 18th so I signed up. I learned so much from that one day workshop in Salisbury MD (14 hours:includes driving).

I went to two sessions by K12 Handhelds and learned about useful websites and the extras needed for using the handheld in the classroom. For administrative reasons I want to have one so I can do my grades, keep track of student behavior, track students meeting the state standards (Learner Profile), and keep track of appointments. I am sure there are more things that it could be used for adminstrative purposes.
I must have spent 5 hours researching the different handhelds available. I have had chats online I have gone into Staples, Office Max and Circuit City asking all kinds of questions. The LifeDrive by Palm and HP's IPAQ2755 are pretty comparable. I am leaning toward the Palm OS.

Back to the NECC conference...I went to a very informative and entertaining session on Technology Grant writing. I hope to be able to be apart of some grant writing in the near future. I am keeping all the tips and tricks and web resources filed neatly in a binder until I am ready.

I went to an outstanding session on digital photography. Leslie Fischer from Adobe spoke about what makes for excellent photographs. I picked up a few new things about camera settings...I tried a few when I was on vacation. I was even more excited when I checked my email and saw that they had video taped her sesson and were making it available on line. I hope to be able to share some of it with my students this semester!