Yo! Where the heck are we. . .?

Saw one of your replies, wondering what you do for gaming in the world of education.

In our class, we are enrolled in an Advanced Web 2.0 class, and as students we are wondering if there is any role for us in this project, if so we would be very interested.

Thanks, Tom. I got your invitation on Friday, but I was away at our state language conference. Will I see you at ACTFL? I'm principally going to chair the CSC meetings; haven't registered for ACTFL per se yet.

I appreciate your invite. Steve

Hi Thomas!
What a small world, indeed, and what an exciting moment for me. I was born and raised in Wilkes-Barre to a hard working, first generation American family. I was raised in my grandparents home, because back then, when money was tight, that's how families around here did it! Wyoming Seminary was an Ivory Tower, that my parents could not even thing of affording for myself and my sibs. As I wrote in a piece on my blog: http://theacademyforearlylearning.blogspot.com my father passed knowing that not only did I teach at the Ivory Tower, eight of his nine grandchildren attended Wyoming Seminary, six of whom, by this May will have graduated and been off to college. As I say in the piece, he died a humble, but proud MAN. It is very exciting to meet you and share reads with you. I hope, as you pass through again, you know where you can get some coffee to fill that Wyoming Seminary coffee mug of yours! All the very best to you and please, let's do keep in touch! Lois

Thomas...Clark is now a member of Classroom 20...So you two guys can become colleagues too!
Lois

Tom,
Great to hear from you! I actually take students to the FF cemetery and one of the gravesites we visit is Thomas Bennet! While the group of old men and young boys were marching towards Exeter to protect the valley against the British and Indians in 1778, the story is that Thomas Bennet told the group (who had been arguing among themselves about the whether or not an attack was prudent) that he thought they were not going to be successful so he went back to the fort. After the battle, an Indian went into where he and his wife were staying and put on some of her dresses. That's part of the story. Have you heard anything like that? I would love to verify it. In addition, I would like to know more about him, his family and their move from Connecticut and life here in the valley. I would like to put information in a book I am working on, and perhaps, have some students reenact parts of the Bennet family life. We are working with Wilkes University in a project to promote local history. I hope to have a wiki set up soon for the local history societies. I must end now or I will go on for much longer--nonetheless--glad to meet you!

Thomas,
I see from the comment below, that you and my actual colleague Clark Switzer, have been in contact. Of that I am quite pleased! Hope things are going well for you...
Lois

Hi Tom,

Just checking in - hoping the physics project is moving forward! It couldn't be more exciting!!

Cheering you on!
betsi

Hey, Tom. Sorry to miss your session Saturday. I had a CSCTFL finance meeting. :-( anyway, I sent a proxy in my place. I heard you had a very large and exciting session.

Thanks Tom for your kind words. You are a great cheerleader.

my wiki

lhsfrenchclasses.wikispaces.com

Perfect, Tom. I'll look at your website and look forward to connecting between the holidays. Happy Tom Day! Steve

an airliner is very similar to a portable smartboard. You can do all of the same things with it, except that you can walk around the room with it in your hand and control the computer from anywhere in the room. You can check it out here:

Hey Tom--Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Just wanted to alert you to a great editorial in the Nov. 28th KY/Cincinnati Enquirer, entitled:
Now more than ever, it's imperative to learn multiple languages." You can find it at http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20081128/EDIT02/811280400/1019/EDIT

Hey Thomas,

As a futurist and your keen interest in education technology to help learners, you said free which is probably apprapro I recommend you take a look at Wiziq's virtual classroom and authorstream's web based power point presentation platform. Both have a feature rich free basic service that online learners may find helpful and fun.

Tom,
I'm pondering. I use some interesting web apps, like U. Texas" Quest and the Andes Physics Tutor. I use a wiki for my physics class too, in MOodle, but I'm still looking for ways to improve pedagogy through technology. I use a Smartboard and clickers in my classroom abd have been very happy with the impact of the clickers.
We have a problen in our district because many of our students are still on dial up at home.

That is interesting. I leaves me somewhat sad that the teachers couldn't find a better way to use the laptops. I can say that ground rules help, but I've never been in this type of situation, teacher facing 25 students with laptops who aren't paying attention to me. I've been on the other side, being one of the those adult students, who knew when to leave the laptop alone.

I do think though that there has to be time when the laptops are not used and students pay attention to the teacher and then are given the opportunity to work on the assignment using laptops. The teachers probably would have been more comfortable with smart boards, although I find that some teachers use it as a presentation tool rather than what it's used for. Same thing with the airliners, however, I am seeing more teachers in my building giving the students access to it, rather than lecturing with it.

Hey Tom,
I finally found some time to really check out this site a bit more... It does look like I'll love it here! Thanks. Talk to you soon...

Hi, Tom.

Thanks for replying to my request in December about moving away from textbooks. Hope you are well. We have run into each other recently at some of the language conferences in Orlando, DC, and Portland.

This is Matt from Indianapolis.

Tom, Thanks for the information on the Virtual Learning Magnet for Space Science and Mathematics. We are going to check it out. We are in the process of redefining how we teach space and environment science because of the power of the tools we have on hand and are looking for ways to extent these opportunities to more students. We also have a physics teacher that has been very involved in the NASA projects including getting a project sent into space. Sounds like a good connections. Thanks again.

Tom, well, it's been over a month since I have been on here, and now I am seeing that you were in Indy. We could have met for a drink. Anyways, is Adrianna from the DOE? I know a professional who works with world languages. Will you be at the Chinese Language Conference in April?

Hi Tom--I'm new to classroom 2.0 so I'm not up on any plans to meet in Orlando, though there is an established Twitter hashtah (#ASCD09), so if you're a Twitter user, you might want to see who's there posting tweets. I'll look for your session---can't remember offhand what my schedule is for Sat afternoon at this point. Maybe I'll see you in Orlando!

Great time to jump in (to Twitter) as it should be cool to read tweets from the same conference. I'm ann1622---and just include #ASCD09 in every tweet.