floodgate.blog

The article I will be discussing is available here: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=1372

First off, I pretty much agree with everything in dan’s article.  As a new teacher, I rely on procedure more than concept, and for the small handful of students who have the adequate breadth of knowledge and desire, I explain things on a more abstract level (outside of the regular classroom though).  And I too rely on textbooks more for practice (problems, examples, etc) than explanations.

I think of dan’s article as an ideal situation: having available a full digital arsenal that would really tie in the realities of the math that we teach.  I enjoy this idealism and the drive for something really fantastic.  If such a package ever existed, I fear its adoption would be slow (to the point that the publishers that would probably stop publishing it) due to a general lack of technology available in many schools.  Perhaps I am in the bottom third, but it is difficult (although not impossible) to have a dvd player, projector, and other devices at my disposal on a regular basis.  Although I’m not 100% sure on this, I am fairly certain that if I proposed this level of technology in the classroom (even if only within my department), I would get the “it’s not in the budget” line.

It would then fall into two categories — put it to the voters (hah) or start working on grants.  I see the second as more reasonable and viable option, but very time consuming.  I have thought about this path before, though.

I love articles that make me think, and I’m glad that I found something to write about for today.

Looks like my Twitter and Shared Items plugins aren’t playing nice together.. twitter is now disabled until I come up with something that makes more sense. I was originally going to code the twitter feeder on my own, and maybe this is the incentive I needed.

10-16″ just wasn’t enough.. although now it’s more vague at 8-20″.. sounds like some c.y.a. on the part of the NWS.

Screenshot taken from The Weather Channel 12/21/2008 @ 9:00am.

So, I guess me running around all excited because we dodged the last storm is coming back to haunt me.  Screenshot taken from The Weather Channel 12/20/2008 @ 4:33pm.

Starting the unnecessarily long process of bringing my visions for my online presence and what is actually “present” into a state of synchronization. The first step is to consolidate everything into one place (which is taking place as I try out “QuickPress”), clean up ancient linked files, and cement this blog where it is. I anticipate outages, frustration, agony, and terror as I get everything where I want it to be. Once I have completed this process, I’ll share the absurdly long outline I made for myself But, for now, ciao.

I guess I’ve been busy.  Here’s a list of everything I’ve been doing and/or working on for the last howeverlong.

• My AppleTV is now playing non-Apple formats (in particular DIVX and XVID).
• I have been busy learning the ins and outs of Moodle and how I can use it in my classroom.
• I’ve started using eXe for lesson planning (ever so slowly), mostly because it’s dumping out content in XHTML, and that it will package an entire lesson as an IMS Content Package for Moodle.
• It seems like some sort of virus or other bug has been floating around this house for the better part of a month, so it seems like one of us has been sick for a while now.
• As a result, I’m exhausted…
• It started snowing…

I thought I had more to write — I guess I’ll remember sometime soon.