Link and new geekiness

I published an article about the digital classroom on Elephant Journal a couple of days ago that I'm rather proud of, and it's gotten some nice feedback. If you're interested in reading/commenting on it, you can find it here.

I've also found a new and cool way to get info to my students without paper. I found an excerpt from a book that I wanted to use with my students, and so I asked the publisher of the book if I could copy it to use. I got permission, scanned it, and saved it as a pdf to a flash drive... but then couldn't decide what to do with it. I wanted them to read it tomorrow in class, but then there was the whole digital vs paper thing that has become something of a block for me now. I ended up emailing them the excerpt. (Yeah, I know.... obvious solution. I really do need to apply Occam's Razor much more often than I do.) Nonetheless, I am still rather pleased with the idea that each of the students in the class already has the excerpt waiting for them in their inboxes. Tomorrow in class, I am going to have them log into their email accounts and read the excerpt. We have the laptop cart tomorrow, so each can use their own, but this still wouldn't be that much of an issue if I have them do this same task in their Learning Teams of three, one team per computer; the principle is the same.

I definitely want to use this as often as possible. Best part is that a student can't claim to have lost the handout or leave it in class... all they need to do is log in at home and there it is! I can and will still print it out for students without internet access, unless they have a flash drive and a computer at home, in which case they can simply load it onto their flash drive, again saving paper.

I so love this whole technology thing. :-)



Oh! Speaking of technology, it's possible to search the 'net and be eco-friendly at the same time! I recently came across Ecoogler, a search engine that uses Yahoo technology and for every 10,000 searches done, they will plant a tree in the Amazon rainforest. To date, they've planted 2,290 trees and counting. So.... bookmark 'em and use it frequently! (Click on their logo or the link to get to their site.)
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