There will be no morning calisthenics, bed checks, or campfires – although I am hoping to make a digital braided lanyard. Our CyberCamp is a computer lab full of some very smart people and I’m hoping to absorb some ideas, tips, and great new tools. From the sounds of things, there will be many very cool projects developing on this blog. We are exploring, focusing, researching, creating, and will be sharing our journey and our projects with all. It should be exciting.
Bud and Jerry have set up a FULL schedule of activities for all of us including blogging (you are here), a book study on Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age by Krauss and Boss.
As far as my own project…well, let’s just say there’s a lot of work to do. My first task is to whittle all my ideas and goals down to a manageable project. We are looking to use Google Apps Education at our high school — I need to wrap my head around all the details, steps, and processes in administering the deployment. Then, hopefully, develop some tutorials that can be used by both students and teachers.
Short of an afternoon glitch of our district internet being down (no fun when it rains on your first day of camp), it was a good first day. Thanks to Bud and Jerry for setting this up for all of us campers!
Off to work, in my sleeping bag, with the flashlight on…
6 responses so far ↓
1
Richard
// Jun 3, 2008 at 6:31 am
We are very lucky to have you at our school!
If you need any help in writing tutorials, let me know. I just got done writing a wiki page that will be available for the TIE conference.
Google is really raising the bar on what can be accomplished for free on the internet. Ideally, I would like each STEM student to have a four year blog to document their learning. Haven’t decided yet whether we should host these on an off-site server or just have them hosted for free either on wordpress.com or blogger.com. Looks like the Computer programming club is getting a large off-site host, so we would have a lot of room (60+ GB storage).
Keep up the good work at camp! You make Skyline proud.
P.S. You may want to tell others about leaving the blogger title bar at the top of the screen. I hadn’t thought about that until you mentioned it to me. I see other teachers may not realize this yet.
Richard G
2
Connie Masson
// Jun 3, 2008 at 7:04 am
Check out iGoogle. I love it. It has helped me to more easily develop the habits necessary to really take easy advantage of all the Google apps that I use. Holler at me when you are in class today and I’d be happy to show you my iGoogle home page and how I use it. Be careful though – all widgets are not the same.
iGoogle is a place I put everything that I need to access on a daily basis. Kind of like my daypack at summer camp. I keep in handy reach my wikispaces, twitter, google calender, delicious bookmarks, leadership quote of the day, google reader. Then further down the screen I have the best sunset pictures changing, tiny url maker, Skype, myspace and facebook (for when I am at home). I also have lots of book and technology widgets.
Have fun at camp today. Be sure to drink lots of water, wear a sun visor for the brightness of all those wonderful ideas flying around. Are y’all going to sing around the campfire?
3
sarahpom
// Jun 3, 2008 at 8:12 am
I am kinda glad it isn’t too much like camping. But it is fun!
4
Joanne
// Jun 3, 2008 at 8:18 am
Myra,
A sleeping bag and flashlight, what great tools for a camping trip. I believe that Google is indeed taking over the world. I’m glad you’re taking on this project. I haven’t paid much attention to all Google has available, but I will now. Connie really touts iGoogle in her post and I’ll be anxious to keep up with what you accomplish during cybercamp.
5
Richard
// Jun 3, 2008 at 9:37 am
If you like iGoogle (and so do I), be sure to check out what they’re cooking up in the Google Labs. That’s where you can find a lot of their works in progress before they are released.
Google’s official motto is “Do no evil.” They’re a big supporter of open source software and even hired Guido Von Rossum, the creator of the Python language. Python is the language I’ll be teaching in the Intro to Programming class at Skyline next year. The Google search engine itself was written using Python.
http://www.python.org/
Google Docs is an online replacement for Microsoft Office, and just recently graduated from the Labs. You can also use Google Pages to make your own class webpage–very handy for teachers, as they are even hosted for free. Google Pages is also in the Labs:
http://labs.google.com/
6
Holli
// Jun 3, 2008 at 11:59 am
I am very interested in seeing what y0u come up with. You could be trailblazing the model that the entire district uses in the future.
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