CHECK THIS OUT

First, I cannot believe that a middle school teacher in Florida responded to my blog -- Second, check out the uses of technology in her classroom and check out her husband's classroom (completely paperless). I am so excited! Below is a copy of her blog to me on my Digital Musings blog:

April 11, 2007 12:28 PM
Jess said...
I teach middle school in Sarasota, Florida and we have what is called NeXt Generation. Our county school district is dedicated to utilizing as much technology as possible within the classroom. On our team, we each have an ActivBoard (similar but more user friendly than a Smart Board), each teacher has his/her own laptop, a class set of computers (mixture of laptops and desktops), and wireless internet connections.We teach our kids how to use Movie Maker, they create web pages using Front Page, they create pamphlets, conduct research, complete online labs for science and even take online assessments. My husband's 8th grade social studies class is complete paperless - he has all of his assignments and assessments online.In order to propel this country's future citizens into the 21st century, we need to invest the money into not only the most up to day and advanced teaching equipment, but also in the training of our teachers to use these machines to their fullest extent. I know that when I move from Florida sometime in the near future, I will not be in the same position, technologically speaking, as I am here. Unfortunately, there are many school districts who are unable to sufficiently fund these sort of programs.
April 11, 2007 6:23 PM


All of this points to our need to be sure and edit our blogs (you never know who is reading them) and our need to communicate with each other on our blogs. If someone who is not a part of our class is checking out our blogs then we owe it to ourselves and each other to check out the blogs of our classmates.