GA EdTech

Using Divshare

Divshare (www.divshare.com) is a file hosting site that allows you to store and host up to 5GB of media for free. You also get 50GB of bandwidth per month. What’s better, Divshare will even give you direct links to the files and even embed code so you can play the file in a webpage or blog. Below is an example of a video about Celestia (a free space program) embedded into this blog, but hosted on Divshare.

What’s so cool about this? Well, it means that you can have free and easy file storage, direct links to those files, and can embed those files anywhere. Podcasting, Videocasting, or even temporary storage – all possible and easy. There is even a Wordpress plugin to seamlessly integegrate Divshare uploading into your Wordpress dashboard. Get your free account today!

Math Blogs

Looking for ways to use blogs in your math classroom? Here are a few sample math blogs for you to check out.

• AP Calculus Blog (06 – abandoned)
• The Exponential Curve
• Math Less Traveled
• Math Notations
• MathTrek Blog
• Numb3rs Blog
• SCES Math Blog (elementary)
• SEGA Tech – Math category

Go to School with the SketchUp Show

These guys have created a very cool website that gives full video tutorials for Google SketchUp. They also host a forum for folks who are looking for SketchUp help or ideas.

Sir Ken Robinson on Creativity

Asking Good Questions

From SEGA Tech…

Continuing our conversation concerning Robert Marzano’s strategies that will help students acquire and integrate learning, think about the questions you are asking or the students are asking. When asking students questions:

1. Ask questions that elicit inferences
2. Ask analytic questions

Resources that focus on the concept of asking higher-level questions include:

• Bloom’s Taxonomy Model Questions and Key Words
• Bloom’s Taxonomy Revision

Barbara Waters, a science teacher whose curriculum is featured on The Annenberg Channel, suggests that, “Asking a question is harder than giving an answer. Never answer an unasked question. I think that over half a lesson should be developed from questions that the children ask — if they didn’t ask the question, they really won’t care about the answer.”

A friend once asked Isidor I. Rabi, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, how he became a scientist. Rabi replied that every day after school his mother would talk to him about his school day. She wasn’t so much interested in what he had learned that day, but she always inquired, “Did you ask a good question today?” “Asking good questions,” Rabi said, “made me become a scientist.”

Have you asked a good question today?

Welcome!

Thank you for joining us in creating a community of support for Georgia teachers.  This site will hopefully serve as a springboard for Georgia ETTCs to provide customized support for grants, projects, and other services for the state.

Our goals are to provide the following services from this domain:

• Our homepage (gaedtech.org) will be a place for ETTCs and guests to post thoughtful or insightful reflections, resources, and questions for all educators to discuss with regards to meaningful technology integration.  This is not a resource site per se, and is more concerned with thoughtful discussion and ideas about instructional technology trends.  As such, we will post when we want to share such ideas, not necessarily every day or week.
• Our Forum (gaedtech.org/forum) will serve as a central support site, not only for grant and project members, but for all educators in Georgia.  We want to help you, but also let you seek help from one another.
• Our Professional Development section (gaedtech.org/pd) is a Moodle site, where we will administer the professional development components of our grants and projects.  All ETTCs are welcome to create content here and share resources.

If you would like to contribute to this discussion, or would like to become a member of our forums, please contact your local ETTC.