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This site contains presentations, publications, lessons and training materials developed over many years. The site is continually updated so I hope you'll come back often. All content is freely shareable and linkable, but I'd love to hear your comments about any of it. You can always find me at sine@udel.edu.

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January 23, 2008

Prioritized spending

I just finished reading the article, Research Windows: The Two-Year Bump by Robert Kadel in the Dec-Jan issue of Learning and Leading with Technology, the magazine of ISTE. Kadel goes on to criticize the funding agenda and realities of the E2T2 provisions of NCLB. He describes how funding is generally used to purchase hardware and software in schools under the budgets of short-term grants. He goes on to question how this 2-year bump in tech spending really helps the schools, teachers and students.

The article is really focused on what research should be done to examine the effect of E2T2 spending and spending patterns. However, to my mind there is a much bigger question. Why do we in education still treat technology as a one-time expense? Why do we fund this with special, competitive grant money? Why does education regard technology as a "special" when every other business uses technology as the cornerstone of increased productivity?

If you leave your classroom and Windows 98 computers today, you might pick up dinner at McDonald's where the computerized cash register routes your order through the networked terminals at each station. Then stop off at Home Depot to have the computer mix paint for you. Is it any wonder that we often have trouble impressing our high schoolers that we know how to best prepare them for the future?

Posted by Pat on 11:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 7, 2008

Learning Del.icio.us

For my first day back, I'm cleaning out all of my notes from 2007! One of the things people have asked is for better instructions for using del.icio.us. I really got the hang of this and used is extensively in 2007. So, my first offering for 2008 is these two guides.

For those who prefer text instructions, How to: Del.icio.us Part 1 from Benibshop.me.uk. There is no part 2, but this is pretty complete for starting.

For video instructions, a simple tutorial from LBurch and posted at teachertube.com. This is 30 minutes long but it's easy to jump around and get just to the part you need instruction on.

Posted by Pat on 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack