Linda Loder's Blog (7)

I haven't written here in a long time, and I don't usually cross-post. But this time, it's different. Here goes:



Unless you live in a vacuum, you know what happened at Ft. Hood, Texas yesterday. Tragedy for those there, tragedy for all our military forces everywhere, as they are, truly, a band of brothers and sisters who normally trust each other with their very lives. Yesterday, that trust was betrayed.



News reports were as chaotic as the scene, as the networks struggled… Continue

I have a grandson (actually, three grandsons and three granddaughters, but I digress already...) Grandson in the middle attends school in a large city district in another state. He called his Grandpa and me last Friday night on his own initiative; I don’t think his parents even know that he called us. He was just missing us, he said.



During the conversation, of course I had to ask how school was going. The boy just sighed. “It’s OK, but it’s getting hard. We’re practicing for the… Continue

The Internet world of many teachers I mentor at several different schools has been shaken up recently by the installation of “new and improved” school filtering systems. It is not the fault of these schools’ tech coordinators, who are struggling valiantly to unblock good resources and keep within the boundaries of policy and law while they are doing it. Rather, the schools have been sold services by vendors who seem to believe that the ‘read only’ web is easier to deal with in educational… Continue

This note went out from a teacher at one of my project schools to another one this past Friday:



"To realize what happened with the kids during this project is awesome. Now I understand - the light has dawned. I did less work and kids did more work without complaining and learned more than I would have ever dreamed possible - on so many levels. Okay; now I am hooked - teach me how to use this stuff."



I was so lucky to see this unfold in her classes on Thursday. Students (Junior… Continue

My husband is a retired Air Force Master Sergeant, and even though we’re a few years out from living that wild, wonderful, crazy existence of being in the military, we have children in the military now and still try to follow what is going on in that world.



One thing that never changes is the use of Jargon. No one does it better than the United States Military. A recent quote in the newspaper, from a Major (whom we know personally) talking about a bombing error by a pilot that resulted… Continue

I'm spending today and tomorrow and the KSDE State Conference in Wichita. Wesley Fryer did a great session today revolving around web 2.0 issues - cyberbullying, blogging, social networking and the issues those present to schools.
One comment he made that really sums up what we're trying to do if we are traching kids the 21st century skills they truly need: How do we teach kids to be their own filter?

OK, now that was fun. I just went through the members list and invited as 'friends' everyone I knew either from prior work experiences, or from reading their blogs quite religiously!
Looking forward to the sharing and the learning!