The Impoverishment of American Culture

This article is "must read" .....

The Impoverishment of American Culture
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010352

Project Based Learning

I thought this article might interest you all....
"The Story-Centered Curriculum" -
looks to me like project based learning.
anyway - it's just preaching to the choir here,
but a good article to share with anyone who
might need to be introduced to such an approach.

Leanne

PowerPoint in gmail

You folks may have already known this, but I just learned about it yesterday. What a treat. If you send someone a Powerpoint in gmail, they can open it right in the email. The prompt asks whether you want to see it in html or a slideshow. Choose the slide show and the pages start to appear.

Cool!

Technology Camp 2007 Podcast

This is the link to the enhanced podcast that I made as part of the Arizona K-12 Center's technology Plug and Play camp in June, 2007. It takes about 4 minutes, but you will see some familiar faces.

Enjoy.

http://biologyclasscasts.info/

GMail and Calendar Notifier

Get notified when you have GMail or a Calendar event - sits on your Menu Bar - I really like it.

And Judi Makes Three

This is posted from a widget. Way cool.

Jeff, FYI - I leased the domain name "biologyclasscast.info" and directed it to my PVHS webpage. (i.e. http://biologyclasscast.info)

I also started a blogger.com blog with the same name. However, I had one last year that I used to post makeup work. It was blocked by the District filter. Any idea if this one can be allowed? (i.e.
http://biologyclasscast.blogspot.com/)

Thanks in advance as always.

This is a test post from the blogger widget for OSX - direct from desktop to this blog - from Jeff....

pvlearners.net & pTUNE

Well, we've made the techno connections between "pvlearners.net" and "pTUNE". "pvlearners.net" is the online learning community/interface using Google Apps, currently being piloted between PVUSD students and teachers. "pTUNE" is the online interface for pod (audio) and vod (video) casts for the PVUSD community. Both represent significant technological and partnership feats, wherein we have the potential to help shape 21st century learning in a big way. Please explore pTUNE (pvlearners.net is a whole 'nuther gig) and begin processing on next steps.

I've added a few pod and vod casts to pTUNE to give you a sense of the possibilities - please don't consider the examples as permanent content. How we want to organize (tabs, albums, chapters, episodes, etc.) for optimal use is now up to us.

• Launch your web browser and go to http://start.pvlearners.net
• On the right side, you'll see a link to pTUNE, click it.
• This should launch the iTunes program on your computer.
• You'll be into PVUSD's area of iTunes U.
• Horizontal tabs let you scroll between Administrative, Curriculum, PD, etc. (we can change/add/delete, as needed)
• There are files that you can "Get", by clicking on them.
• Once clicked, downloading occurs and you are put into another holder within iTunes and can play the file - learning iTunes is beyond the scope of this email.
• If you want to go back to PVUSD's area within iTunes, click on the "iTunes Store" on the left pane.
• If you click on a video file, it will play in a small window in the left corner - click on the window and it "grows" to a larger size.

These resources (storage, applications, use and presence) are provided free to us. The techno world wants to engage with us and see how K12 puts these tools to use. Enjoy....more to come......Jeff.....

Google Maintenance - April 26th

Hello Jeff,

We wanted to inform you that we are planning to conduct routine maintenance to Google Calendar between 8AM and 9PM on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 . During this time, this service may be unavailable to some of your users. Please inform your users about this planned maintenance appropriately. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work to improve Google Calendar.

If you have any questions, you can contact the Google Apps Support team through the Google Apps Help center (http://www.google.com/support/a/).

Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team

Please do not reply directly to this message. Please contact us through the Google Apps Help Center (http://www.google.com/support/a/) if you have any questions.

Google Apps - Online Tutorials

Some nice online tutorials for Google Apps can be experienced at

http://www.google.com/support/a

Go to the online tutorials in the lower left hand corner. Might be good for your students - quick and to the point.