SmartBoard Training - Central Office

Great news!

I have worked it out so everyone who currently has a SmartBoard in their classroom will be provided with more training. Even better news, the training will be a ½ day session held here in the district and Mr. Durbin has agreed to provide subs for each of you so everyone can attend this training session during a regular school day. These sessions will be held at the Board of Education room (3rd floor), at the Market Street Central Office building. (212 Market Street, New Richmond)

See you there!

OSU Students use iPods for Medical School Study

The Ohio State University's medical school has joined the ranks of colleges replacing cumbersome textbooks with the Apple iPod touch this year.

OSU med officials say the iPod lets students study high-quality images of organs and body parts in the palm of their hand, on the fly. A welcomed change from the days of flipping through textbooks to find pictures and directions for surgical procedures.

Technology Empowers Differentiated Instruction

ISTE webinar offers new strategies for ensuring that all students learn by tailoring instruction to their abilities, needs, and interests


Although many educators realize technology's enormous potential to help them differentiate their instruction so that all students can learn, regardless of students' needs, abilities, or learning styles, it might be hard for them to find concrete applications of this approach to emulate in their classrooms. But in a Jan. 28 webinar from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), experts provided several examples of classroom projects that can help all students learn while keeping them engaged.

The webinar, titled "Differentiated Instruction + Tech = Powerful Learning," was presented by Grace Smith and Stephanie Throne--authors of the book Differentiating Instruction with Technology in K-5 Classrooms and the soon-to-be-published Differentiating Instruction with Technology in Middle School Classrooms. Both authors are former educators.

Smith and Throne described differentiated instruction (DI) as a strategy that is centered on the belief that students learn in many different ways. They also said DI is a collection of best practices from gifted, traditional, and special education. "Some educators think it's a new model, but it isn't," said Throne.

Both presenters agreed that DI is student-centered, offers multiple paths to learning, and is grounded in assessment practices. They also cited research that shows students are more successful in school and find it more satisfying when they are taught in ways that are responsive to their readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles.

According to the presenters, teachers can differentiate four elements of instruction: content, process, product, and learning environment. They also can differentiate instruction based on student traits, such as readiness, learning profile, interest, and affect.

Finally, educators can differentiate instruction through a range of instructional and management strategies, including software, video streaming, and the web.

"Above all, DI should be used to promote 21st-century skills," said Smith. "This includes digital-age literacy, inventive thinking, effective communication, and high productivity. A mastery of these skills will lead to student achievement."

Both authors said technology is a great choice to consider for DI, because it helps to personalize instruction, enhances learning with multimedia components, can help students construct new knowledge, and motivates students with their work.

"We also like to give students choices in their learning, because offering choices gives students a way to make decisions about what they will do in order to meet class requirements," said Smith.

One way to do this is to create and present what the authors called a "tic-tac-toe board," or three-by-three grid, of suggested activities from which students can choose to demonstrate their understanding of a topic. This helps students make their own choices and also gives the teacher an idea of his or her students' interests.

College Web Design Courses Fail With Bosses

Experts say higher education should focus on fundamentals of web design, not just currently popular software


Web site development experts said in a recent survey that colleges and universities lag behind in using the latest in web design technology and ignore foundational lessons that would produce college graduates ready for the rapidly changing profession.

The survey, called "Teach the Web," was released Jan. 20 and includes opinion and advice from 32 web design professionals who are considered some of the most knowledgeable and respected in the world.

James Archer, an executive at Phoenix-based Forty Agency, a marketing company, said in the survey that campus bureaucracies move slowly when approving new curriculum, while the web design industry "moves fast enough that the curriculum is obsolete by the time they get around to committee approval."

Forty Agency does not hire graduates of university web development programs, Archer said.

"The culture of large educational institutions has, in my experience, consistently proven itself unable to cope with the demands of such a varied and fast-moving industry," Archer said. "I know many good people are trying, but I've yet to see anyone come out of a university program knowing what they'd need to know in order for us to hire them. Most of the time, they've been brought a long way down the wrong path."

Leslie Jensen-Inman, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she teaches design, business, and technology, wrote the "Teach the Web" survey and said web design college instructors should embrace the business's harsh realities.

"Let's face it. Technology moves fast; academia doesn't," Jensen-Inman, a member of the Web Standards Project Education Task Force, wrote in the survey's introduction.

She said campus officials should build relationships with leaders in the web design industry and use their advice to shape faculty approaches and college courses.

"As the people who will hire our students, they should have input about what type of students we are producing," Jensen-Inman wrote.

Several experts said slow-moving changes in university curriculum result in students learning about program such as Photoshop that will be considered outdated by the time they graduate and apply for jobs.

Because web design firms see constant change and updates to technology, some experts said students should develop basic knowledge to attract employers.

Molly Holzschlag, an author and web standards advocate, said "general awareness of the web, social networking and culture, strong spoken and written language skills, [and] enthusiasm and commitment to life-long learning" would signal to employers that a recent college graduate is capable of keeping up with ever-changing technology.

"Everything else can be taught, and will be taught, over and over as time goes on," said Holzschlag, who has written more than 30 books on web design. "Therefore, it's the broadly educated, open-minded, and self-motivated individuals who would get my attention."

Critical Internet Explorer 7 Security Patch Released

The stars of yesterday's security bulletins from Microsoft were a couple of flaws in Internet Explorer 7 (not earlier versions). These were rated critical so it's obvious you have to take them seriously, but in fact it's more serious than that.

A few months ago Microsoft started including an "Exploitability Index" value to show how easy it should be to construct a successful attack using the vulnerability they were disclosing. In many cases, a vulnerability may be critical because the consequences of it being exploited are serious, but in fact it is not so easy to exploit.

Yesterday's Internet Explorer vulnerabilities were give an Exploitability Index value of 1, which translates to "Consistent exploit code likely." Microsoft adds the note "Consistent exploit code can be crafted easily." See the monthly security bulletin summary and click on Exploitability Index for all this. For some reason, Microsoft does not include these Exploitability Index values in the individual security bulletins, such as the one for Internet Explorer yesterday.

What this means is that you can expect, or at least you should assume, that attack code to exploit this vulnerability will be on the Internet very soon. It will be pushed through all the usual channels, some of which are hard to avoid, such as ad banners.

Yesterday's SQL Server vulnerability also received an Exploitability Index value of 1 and, in fact, according to Microsoft "Post-authentication, functional exploit code has been published." This means that a user who can authenticate on the server can exploit the flaw to take control. It's just a matter of time before there is plug-in code to exploit it through a SQL injection vulnerability.

To install any newly released patches, run Windows Update from your PC.

Web Spotlight: TeacherTube

TeacherTube's goal is to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos. They are seeking to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. It's a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.

Feel free to click here to get started.

Watch Out For Valentine's Day Virus

Valentine's Day-themed malware is an old tradition by now. This year will see the ninth anniversary of the ILOVEYOU worm, one of the early mail worms that drove the development of malware and anti-malware. And we're seeing some this year too.

McAfee has found a particularly cute one. Follow a link in spam e-mails they have been monitoring and you get to this web page:



Everyone loves puppies, and this message tries to get you to download the "Valentine Devkit" which, you have probably already guessed, is a Trojan horse program.

McAfee had just recently issued a general warning about Valentines-related threats, but experienced users should be on the lookout for these things every year, or even in the love off-season.

Google Sync with iPhone Available

Google announced today that the beta Google Sync for Mobile capability, long a feature on the Blackberry, has now been extended to iPhones (via Microsoft's ActiveSync), and also to other devices that support the SyncML standard. You can sync your Google-side calendar and contacts to your device of choice, free, bidirectionally, starting today.



There are a few caveats with this beta, as one might expect: the main one is that you cannot use the sync capability if you already synchronize with an Exchange account, as there can be only one ActiveSync config on the iPhone or iPod touch at any time. Setting up sync with Google will also nuke your local contacts and calendar on the device, so back up before you proceed. Still, this represents a big step forward in the delicate dance of Google services in cooperation with Apple's mobile gear.

If you configure sync for your device, let us know how it goes! Early comments note that the lack of multiple calendar support is a showstopper -- if that applies to you, check out the NuevaSync option. Update: You can apparently sync up to five calendars to the phone, see here for details.

Click Here to get started.

Or Here.