This week at the National School Boards Association’s Technology and Leadership Conference, twenty educational technology leaders to watch for the next twenty years will be honored.
Where are the Ohio people? Arizona seems to be the place to be with four of their leaders making the list.
Congratulations to everyone on the list. I already read several of their blogs. I plan to see what the others have to say.
Last night the College of Education hosted Betty Siegel, co-author of Becoming and Invitational Leader.
According to Dr. Better, great educators treat students with dignity. She gave many examples from her own life explaining how teachers had either crushed her self-confidence or built it up with simple words spoken to her.
She had one idea that could lead to an interesting educational experience for some high school students. She has a plan to give high school juniors a three-month culture experience unlike anything I have seen.
During the first month the students will watch movies, listen to music and visit exhibits of fine art. The second month will involve working a minimum wage job. The student must support himself/herself with the money from this job. During the final month the student will volunteer to work with a group that helps underprivileged or unhealthy individuals.
All of these experiences will give the students cultural experiences that will help them relate to more diverse groups of people.
Here are some simple rules to keep in mind when sorting data in Excel.
1 – Format the first row differently (make it bold) and Excel will automatically understand that row is a heading. It will not be sorted with the remaining rows.
2 – You don’t need to select all the data that will be sorted. By default, Excel will sort all non-blank rows and columns of continuous data. If you have 100 rows of data in columns A through H, you don’t need to highlight A1:H100 before sorting. You can click in any cell and all the rows will be sorted based on the contents of the column of the selected cell.
3 – Excel remembers the order of your last sort each time a new sort is executed. If you need your data sorted by last name and then by first name, sort them in reverse. Click one cell in the first name column and sort. Then click one cell in the last name column and sort. You will get all your names properly sorted without using the custom sort tool.
4 – If you have data that you do not want to be sorted, create a blank row or column between the area that you want sorted and the area you don’t want sorted. This is handy if you have a calculation at the bottom of a column and you don’t want the calculated value to get mixed with the data in the next sort. Instead of placing the calculation in the first available cell under the column, skip one cell leaving a blank row.
If you have some time to kill, click over to eSchool News and read about educators that are looking at ways of using the iPhone in school.
The article sites new potential applications on the iPhone: world weather, encyclopedia, simulations, widgets, blogs, etc.
Consider the cost of implementing a project like this. The iPhone is $400 even after the $200 drop last month. The least expensive plan is $60 per month with a two year agreement required. That adds up to $1840 for a portable computer with a screen the size of a deck of cards.
If you can get past the cost, consider this. I don’t know of a school in Ohio that permits cell phone usage during school. Who will stop the kids from texting all the time? And I won’t even mention that there will be no way to filter web content on each of these cell phones that can easily bypass the schools wireless network.
For the same money, buy everyone a high end laptop. It will do more and fit into the environment better. I thought the iPhone hype was over.
I received a message from the Ohio Historical Society explaining how to see a map with all the markers for the state. If you know how to do it, the feature has been there all along.
1 – Go to the search site – http://www.ohiochannel.org/your_state/remarkable_ohio/search_markers_01.cfm
and click Submit without entering any search criteria. This will find all the markers in the state. Be patient, it takes about a minute to load them all.
2 – When the full list appears, click the Map Markers link at the top of the list. This will display the map shown above with over 1200 markers.
This is a regular Google map so you can pan and zoom.
