Bob.Snyder's Blog (11)

I always cringe when I hear the word, diet. It brings back memories of my days as a competitive wrestler before the sensible and required certification process that now exists. I would play football at 170 or so and a month later would be wrestling at about 130. It wouldn’t take long to put on the weight after the season and, often, more went on then came off. Even in my adult life the word diet has meant eating less, exercising more until the weight was off and then ending the diet. Of course… Continue

Age the age of thirtyone, I decided what I really wanted to be when I grew up was a teacher. I had been involved in coaching for several years (and several sports) and realized that I enjoyed sharing my skills and knowledge with the younger generation more than I enjoyed my job. I come from a family of teachers and administrators so I knew what I was getting into, it wasn't a pipe dream of perfect students and ideal classes. After finishing college and getting that first job 17 years ago, I can… Continue

I get asked, every now and then, what I do. It is a legitimate question that had no easy or short answer until now. I am the guy that knows where to put the X.

OK, what does that mean? It actually is the punch line to a short story about an engineer. He worked for a large company helping to develop a complex matrix of computers. In our troubled times he was forced to take an early retirement and let the company under less than agreeable circumstances. Financially he was solid and looked… Continue

I spent the last two weekends working at our Regional Team and Individual wrestling tournaments. I have have been involved in the sport of wrestling for more than 30 years, first as a participant, then as for two and a half decades as a coach and , finally as a volunteer at meets. If fact I run a couple of meets a year because I have the right software. Looking back over this involvement, wrestling provided me with some very useful guidelines about working with technology.

1. Setting a… Continue

Blogs are absolutely great. I posted some comments about Dimdim and some of the issues I had. I was contacted by a representative of Dimdim given some information. Dimdim has posted a new version and it is awesome. The presenter desktop sharing works very well. The video is very clean and I need a new mike, but that is my issue not theirs. We are moving forward with testing it out doing small group staff development. I show and tell and the audience does and asks questions. We are looking for… Continue

Last Friday a colleague emailed me asked what would I say are the three best pieces of technology available to teachers? These questions really gave me pause to think about the technology I deal with everyday as an Instructional Technologist responsible for training teachers in the latest technology we have available. If I went back to the classroom tomorrow and was told I could take any three pieces of technology with me, what would I take?



In my response I assumed I would have a… Continue

As we work through our implementation plan for increasing the use of our Blackboard Learning, Content, and Community systems we often get lost in the minutiae of administration and lose track of what is happening on the end-users side. I have used blended online learning environments as a teacher and as a staff development instructor for 11+ years. The tools available to a teacher and the students are awesome. Discussion boards have been the backbone of online courses. They still are. At time I… Continue

As a golfer I frequency hear that if you don't play and don't practice the skills that you have built up will begin to disappear. Living in the frozen north where our winters tend to deposit a lot on snow on golf courses making play or practice an impracticality, I can vouch for the premise to some extent. My 2 handicap does not carry over well from Novemeber to April but by the time it hits 5 or 6 in June I'm playing better and the handicap is helpful in those friendly wages that are a part of… Continue

Probably the most exciting aspect of my job is working as a technical advisor and ocassional teacher in our newly refurnished planetarium. I once was a middle school science teacher so the blending on my academic knowledge and technical skills was a perfect fit. Our planetarium is outfitted with a dome projection system and we are running the lastest version of Uniview by http://www.scalingtheuniverse.com/. This software changes the way univese is… Continue

We have started to invest in student response clicker systems. The CPS clickers by Interwrite have come to the top our list. It is plug and play rf system and they integrate with Examview (which they own). We have some Interwrite interactive white boards, which are great, and some Interwrite Pads. I absolutely love the clickers. If I was back in the classroom, this would be a piece of technology that I would have to have. The ability to formative assess and track progress is a very valuable… Continue

Like many districts everywhere we are in the midst of a budget reduction, 9.3 million this year and about the same again next year. We are actively pursuing alternate ways to train teachers that don't require face to face or time out of the classroom. We have Blackboard and that works well but we are also looking for a low cost (free is really what we need) way of video conferencing with a small groups of teachers. I tried out Dimdim today with some success and some failure. The desktop sharing… Continue