Lightning in a Bottle

The George Lucas Educational Foundation has long maintained a nice resource web site called EduTopia. Educational technology is not the sole focus, but one of the empasized areas. In addition to the web resources, they have created a variety of print and video-based materials as well.

The foundation has now launched a print magazine, and the subscription is free for educators. You can check out the table of contents and read articles from the first issue online. If you looks like something you’d benefit from, it’s pretty hard to beat free when it comes to paying for it. (Just make sure you click the last checkbox on the registration page that asks them not to share your email address…)

The NetDay organization is again surveying students about their thoughts on educational technology. Last year over 200,000 students completed the survey, and the results made for interesting reading. So far this year over 40,000 students have filled out the survey. The site will remain up until Nov. 21 for students to put in their opinions and ideas about how technology can and should be used in their schools.

So get your kids logged in and participating - if they haven’t already!

The latest twist on the Googling phenomenon is the Google SMS Beta. Most new cell phones have the ability to send and receive short message service (SMS) text messages. You can now send short questions to Google through SMS messages, and it will send answers back a few minutes later.

In its current form, Google SMS can look up business listings, residential listings, product prices, word definitions, brief snippets from web pages, and calculations and conversions. For instance, if you enter half a cup in teaspoons into a text message and send it to 46645 (GOOGL), shortly afterwards you should receive a message that says: Calculator by Google: half (1 US cup) = 24 US teaspoons

So, if this technology is here today, imagine what we’ll have five years from now. Just how do we adjust our thinking about what kids need to learn when they will have anytime anywhere access to any data they might need? We’ll fight it for awhile, of couse, banning cell phones from use in class and putting up jammers during the SATs, but sooner or later we need to catch on that are we hiding from reality.

HP has announced their next round of the HP Technology for Teaching grant initiative. They will select 75 teams of five teachers each from schools across the country, and each team will receive a package of equipment and training worth about $30,000. It will include:

• an HP Tablet PC with Microsoft? Windows? XP Tablet PC Edition
• an HP multimedia projector
• an HP digital camera
• a $500 stipend
• customized professional development opportunities to support the use of technology in their teaching and support from a mentor with experience integrating technology in the K-12 environment
• The team will share use of an HP all-in-one printer/copier/scanner machine

There is much more info at the site. Applications will start being accepted in early January, but you can register your intent to apply now.

Two high schools in the Pittsylvania County Schools (really!) of Virginia have addressed a teacher vacancy in one school by using technology to share a teacher from the second high school. Although the article doesn’t address the technology used (the author keeps using the word “satellite”, but I can’t really believe they are using a satellite broadcasting system), the interesting part is that the teacher and the students seem to have quickly adjusted to the model.

I also thought it interesting that the most difficult problem for continuing into the future was making the schedules work across the two buildings.