Thursday, March 31, 2011

Blooms Digital Taxonomy

I am always amazed at the thought processes, intelligence and the willingness to share that some people have. I came across a wiki by a New Zealand educator by the name of Andrew Churches. He has done some amazing work on Blooms Taxonomy and relating it to the digital approach. It is called "Educational Origami" and you will get lost in there for hours. He has been a keynote speaker and noted educational blogger for a number of years.
Check it out at    http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Google Art Project

A really interesting site I read about the other day was from google - their "Art project" site. This is a work in progress and will only improve further (although a fantastic site as is). Many of the world's leading art galleries have come on board. There are tours around the gallery, visits to different floors and rooms. You can zoom in on a painting to examine the smallest detail or brush stroke. Incredible ! A fantastic resource for any student - regardless of age. Mainly European art at the moment - but plans for Australian galleries to join at a later date. Have a look.

 




Sharing Information

It hit home to me today about the aspect of sharing information and trying to avoid "re-inventing the wheel". A fellow from another school wanted to come and see what we were doing with our mac laptop program. After showing him around and talking about our journey over the last 18 months, he mentioned about his own school plans. To trial a one on one laptop program with a mac wiki server. His plan was to highlight the whole thing at the end by having a "sharing" session with the IT powers to be, the Director and any interested parties. I might add our system is a windows system therefore anything apple is considered in the "we don't support that" category. I pointed out we had already done that very same thing 12 months previously - to the very same people. He was rather surprised and wondered why he hadn't heard about it or been told about it. The need to share information. Hence, I suppose why this blog was started. We often have ideas which we try and learn from - only to find someone has done that very same thing previously and we could have learnt from their efforts - and probably been a little further on with our journey. Not that everyone's journey is the same. It depends on fellow workers, expertise, interest, support as well as community. But often someone's mistakes, hiccups or viewpoints can save us some time, and supply knowledge or information to make our journey quicker or smoother.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Getting this Blog Going !

I thought it was about time I started getting this blog going. It is a work in progress. So I will warn you before you start.
The purpose of this blog is to share my information and "knowledge" of how I got to this point. My "knowledge" is limited and is simply gained by trying things, reading and asking. Therefore the title "The wood butchers guide to Technology". I have not been trained in technology - I am an older teacher who simply found that I needed to keep abreast of things for the sake of our students. Classified as a computer "Nerd" by fellow staff members because of the clever skill of being able to fix 90% of their computer problems by - you guest it - "reboot" (clever aren't I ?).
I only came to computers (as many older users would relate to) in about 1995 because my wife and I were doing a Uni course (ironically - language - NOT technology) and our old type writer kept missing keys (the lecturers would not be amused). Will we buy a new type writer or one of those new fangled things - a computer. We also had a 9 year old son - so maybe get hip with the latest technology for his sake. After that - it was just getting familiar as one saw the need.
I won't bore people with the journey of the dial up modem, the joys of powerpoint etc. We all went through that.
My purpose of this blog is to share with people where I am now. An apple one on one program' class websites, cloud computing. This is the information I wish to share - not because I am an expert. Simply - I am a wood butcher.
I suppose the thing that has held me back is trying to put tabs into this post - so I can share some of the documentation I have done on the way. But I will figure that out later.