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Monday, January 5. 2009
 The seemingly simple Google Search page has lots of tricks up its sleeve. One of my favorites is using Google to define a word. In fact, when you use this trick, you usually get several definitions from various websites so you can pick the one you like best. Watch the following "commercial" I made to find out how.
Continue reading "Use Google Search to Define a Word"
Sunday, January 4. 2009
 Since 1996 the Internet Archive has kept a digital time capsule of the World Wide Web. You can access this enormous archive using the Wayback Machine. Simply enter a web address and the Wayback Machine lists dates you can click to view the webpage from that particular date.
I entered http://whitehouse.gov into the Wayback Machine and received a large listing of archived snapshots of that webpage:
Continue reading "The Wayback Machine"
Monday, December 22. 2008
2008 is coming to a close and we’re facing some big challenges. The economic downturn and real estate collapse in Arizona have hit budgets hard. The Arizona K-12 Center has been forced to cut back, along with school districts and most people. But our mission isn’t any less urgent. The students in our schools today require just as good an education, if not better, than those who attended in stronger economic times. So we can’t let down just because the going has gotten tougher. In fact, now more than ever, we all need to advocate for the profession of teaching and for students. Education shouldn’t be seen as a casual expenditure but as a capital investment.
Continue reading "Change starts with an idea."
Wednesday, December 10. 2008
 You probably use Google to search the Internet. Google is most-used search engine for good reason: it generally produces the results users are looking for. You probably don't know how Google ranks search results. Many people don't, so let's explore how Google sorts its findings.
Continue reading "Google's PageRank System for Search Results"
Monday, December 8. 2008
As teachers, we’ve always told our students that they could do or be anything they wanted to be. But did we really believe it? Or was it just our way of hoping for the best for them? Now, with the election of Barak Obama to be the next United States President, we know any given student really can become anything. After all, Obama is half black, came from a single parent home, and for much of his childhood was raised by his grandmother under modest circumstances. This raises the stakes for teachers. There are students in our classrooms today who will change the world for the better. They will find the cure for AIDS and cancer. They will develop answers for global warming. This isn’t just hopeful rhetoric anymore; this is simple plain fact. And we as teachers are called upon to step up and give them the education they need to meet their destinies. We can’t discriminate when it comes to our students; every child needs the best possible education, as if they were preparing for the presidency.
Continue reading "Which of Your Students is the Next President?"
Wednesday, December 3. 2008
Teachers who publish their students' work online know just how powerful it is to give learners an audience. As a fifth grade teachers I started publishing student work online in 1998. Ten years ago it wasn't so easy to publish online and very few classrooms and schools had their own websites. I didn't yet have a classroom website, so I published where I could: Amazon.com. That's where I put book reviews by my students. I immediately noticed that the quality of their work increased because they were creating a project for a real purpose.
Continue reading "Media Showcase"
Tuesday, November 11. 2008
 Teachers often find themselves showing a computer's screen to a group of students. Whether it's a webpage or software application, chances are that much of what appears on the screen is too small to see clearly (even when projecting the screen onto a large wall).
Windows and Macintosh users have ways of zooming into portions of the screen. Magnifying parts of the screen is helpful to highlight what students should focus on. Words on screen can be practically unreadable from a distance.You can see from the screenshots below that it's much easier to show an audience a link to click when zoomed.
Continue reading "Zoom into a Computer's Screen"
Tuesday, November 11. 2008
 Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It can be a very valuable resource if you keep in mind that, no joke, anyone can edit it. Does this make it more or less accurate? Many educators agree that Wikipedia is a source to be consulted, but more reliable sources should be referenced. Educators should teach students to be careful readers when using Wikipedia.
I want to show you an often overlooked feature of each and every Wikipedia page. First, let's go to the Wikipedia page for Octopus.
Continue reading "Wikipedia's Overlooked Feature"
Tuesday, October 21. 2008
 There are lots of great videos on YouTube that you may want to share with students at school. Unfortunately, chances are YouTube is blocked in your building. That doesn't mean you can't use YouTube videos in your classroom. You can use a free web service to download videos from your home Internet connection and bring them back to school on your laptop, flash drive, iPod, or DVD.
Continue reading "Download YouTube Videos and Use Them at School"
Tuesday, October 14. 2008
I'm pleased welcome you to the Arizona K-12 Center's blog! What exactly is a blog? It is short for weblog and here's a definition for you: A blog is an easy-to-update website that is
organized in reverse chronological order. As a reader, you don't really care that it's easy for us to update the site. But what easy posting means is that we get to focus on what we write for the blog, not the process of getting it online. As a reader you will like that the newer posts are listed first so you don't have to hunt for what's new.
Continue reading "What is a blog?"
Wednesday, October 8. 2008
Welcome to the Arizona K-12 Center blog, where you can find out more about what is happening in K-12 education statewide in Arizona, specifically in the area of professional development for teachers. In our complex educational system, there are a few simple truths. One of these is that the better the teacher, the better the student. At the Center, we are focused on supporting excellence in professional development as an essential means for improving student performance now and in the future.
Continue reading "Inspiration by example."
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