Student Led Technology Family Learning Night

For the past several years Triggs ES has hosted a Technology Family Learning Night where parents and students could have hands-on time with the school technology. We've tried to make it a learning experience, but it usually turned out to just be a teacher facilitated play time with technology. This year we decided to approach it differently and model the night after a traditional hands-on technology...

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iPad Tip: Lock the orientation

When rotating your iPad from portrait to landscape, the image will rotate in order to stay right side up. This is useful when you are looking at different types of media, for example, looking at photos or surfing the web. However, when you are presenting using your iPad screen, you don't want the screen to constantly change as you move around. Luckily, there is an easy way to lock the screen so that...

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iPad Tip: Lock the screen to a single app

Restricting an iPad to one app can be very useful in a classroom environment where you want to make sure students stay on task. With so many cool and useful apps, it can be easy for students to tap from one app to another. In addition, sometimes students accidentally quit an app by pushing the Home button with their thumb when holding the iPad in landscape mode. Thankfully Apple has built in a very...

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Working with the pros

I've written about the student run broadcasts our school does here and here. It's been a really fun experience. This group of students is a blast to work with! Recently I made contact with the Kevin Janison, the weatherman from our local Channel 3 news station. I invited him to visit our school to see what these students were doing and to answer questions about his job. He agreed and also...

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Admitting we're wrong

Image via Flikr The Las Vegas-Review Journal reported today that high school students in Clark County School District would no longer be required to pass proficiency exams in order to receive a high school diploma. I welcome this decision, but am disappointed with one item that was reported in the article. The high school proficiency exams have been derided ever since their inception. They forced...

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It's The Relationships

I recently went to a job interview and one of the questions I was asked went along the lines of "How would you use technology to communicate with and encourage teachers to integrate technology more in their classrooms." Taking the question at face value, it sounded like the questioner wanted to hear about some innovative way of using email, Twitter, or podcasting to get teachers really psyched about...

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