"Bilbo Bloggins"

Classroom Manage This

2008-11-13T18:29:00.000-08:00

Over the past 10 years it has become clear to me that in order to maintain order students must come from homes with structure and discipline. Students with no reprocusions at home are likely not to fear or not care about any type of discipline at school. Therefore they run a muck, going about doing whatever they can to gain the attention of anyone who cares to notice. Unfortunate for the schools, as these time bandits rob the classrooms of valuable time in which any and all need to survive or excel.

Its time to bring back family values, now more than ever........

Master Teacher odds and ends

2008-10-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

Lists of possible support for master teacher program.

AU students
SHS students
Teams/Committies
Unit Plans
Websites
Software

2008-2009 SMS Mustangs Conversation Area

2008-09-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

Whats on your mind students?

Open Blog for the past school year

2008-06-30T06:33:00.001-07:00

Whats on your mind kids??

Themes from the school year.

2008-06-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

Many a themes came to be this school year. Here is a taste of the most common.
I forgot my homework
I forgot may book
I forgot my pencil.
I have no paper
I thought I turned it in
I did'nt know we had homework
I don't understand it
HUH.....
Way too talkative
No respect

etc..................................................

Communication at School

2008-04-27T13:37:00.001-07:00

An essential Link is missing between Parent and Student & Parent and Teacher. Technology is only as useful as the people using it. In cases, the technology is simply not available for some. This does cause a problem with students that are "not up to standard." Knowing this, teachers must double our efforts to reach the parents of these students. But the students are crafty. One would hope that the student does not lie to his or her parents, but lets not be foolish about this. Students will weave their webs of diseption to prolong the effects of a told lie. A teacher might enter a missing grade in the gradebook, while the student tells the parent that he or she did it. So the cycle starts. Phone messages are deleted, mail intercepted, without technology, these parents and teachers will not connect.
Blogs, e-mails, immediate text messages, who knows what the future holds for reporting.

Yearbook Additions

2008-01-29T15:06:00.000-08:00

Like the yearbooks of the past, I feel it is time to revisit some of the things that we used to do for the students. By adding a message to the yearbook or DVD yearbook, I feel that the students see it as more personnal and be more opt to purchase one.

Hits on Website due to Interactions, I Think.

2007-11-21T15:28:00.000-08:00

Using Contentgenerator as a means for student studying has been a great addition. My website went from having 50 hits at the beginning of the school yeaar to almost 900 hits in 3 months of school. I am not saying that it is due to these games being put on, but my former website for math that I used for 3 years currently only has 90 hits.

Go Figure.

Students more opt to "Study" with Flash Games

2007-10-08T16:36:00.001-07:00

I have had so many students ask when I will post new flash games to my site. Hopefully, I'll be able to produce original ones rather than use templates from other people.

Another day

2007-09-20T17:09:00.001-07:00

When it doubt, go with the gut feeling about things.

Use a the wars for statistics, throws for measurement and graphing distance for improvement.

Scatter plot progressively.

Content generator

2007-09-16T05:14:00.001-07:00

Using content generator to have the students create educational games and post them to my website has been a great way to review text material. We need to find the proper way to send the materials, otherwise we will burn them to a disc and pop them into the computer as needed.

SMS Social Studies Q & A

2007-08-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

For any and all questions, please chime in.

SMS SPORTS BLOG

2007-08-22T17:12:00.001-07:00

AS OF AUGUST 22, 2007, WE ARE POSTPONING ALL EVENTS AND PRACTICES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. AS SOON AS SOMETHING NEW BECOMES OFFICIAL, I WILL LET YOU KNOW. THANKS AND TAKE CARE.

Ideas for School Funding

2007-08-20T08:17:00.000-07:00

I had a thought the other night and I had to spend some time thinking about it. If the school or independent business were to host a free film festival, and sold items, such as popcorn, soda, candies, etc... this could be an ideal fund raising idea granted we could set up a big screen to show the film. little theater, middle school, a gym, steel workers hall? Many questions could be asked and answered, but from someone with the know how.
A donation could be suggested, but no fee to get in, I think this would bypass copyrights of the movies.

Ideas for the Future

2007-08-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

Drafting books a la Red in TSS.
Language that the students understand. So, ask the question how would you exlpain this to one of your friends, making sure that everything that is required has been covered.

Finished

2007-07-31T09:28:00.001-07:00

Finally I have completed all the projects and turned in my final assignment. This concludes my work at Ashland.

Blogger

2007-07-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

Blogger was my first experience with the concept of blogging for personal use. I have had a limited experience with blogging altogether until this class. Blogger.com allows me to record my thoughts into an online journal that I will be able to look back through and recall any thoughts or ideas tat I have had in the past. This a good thing for me as I do not like to carry around a calendar everywhere I go, nor do I like to live out of a Blackberry, as if it ends up lost, I have nothing. I normally write things on my wrist, and as the old saying goes, if your hand gets chopped off at the wrist, you have bigger problems to deal with than what ever was on the wrist to begin with.
Blogger.com is a free site and with a simple sign-up you’re on your way. Positive aspects of blogging in the classroom would be that it promotes computer-based communications, it allows for ideas to be brainstormed on by other people, thus enriching whatever it is you are blogging about. It also gives you feedback on ideas that you have, as well as information that you may not have thought of pertaining to your blogged idea.

Closing in on the End

2007-07-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

As I have been working on all of the different types of software, I cannot help but wonder the balance of usage there must be in order to integrate each type of software without the students becoming sick of it. Then it had occur ed to me that students would most likely enjoy something such as a blog, not only to communicate with the teacher, but with each other. Phones and cell phones are fine, but you are connected with only one person at a time. With blogging, you could set a time and from there, questions, ideas, and brainstorming sessions could occur without having to play phone tag, email tag, an so on.

In a perfect classroom, I would think that the students would want to be connected as much as possible with the rest of the students that they work with, as well as with the teacher. This really is a powerful tool. I hope to be able to use this in class in the future as a tool for when students are at home. I guess its the new phone number, only student just type in what they need to know. Obviously, discussion rooms would be the best thing, blogging must be the next best thing to that.

PowerPoint, Video, Webquest

2007-07-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

I am certain that these three will be finished by the end of the week. I have been trying to think of ideas for the video which would help my students with something difficult. I am considering a demonstration of the software Sony Vegas, which is the software that we use for movie production.

Finishing Up Several Projects

2007-07-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

I have been working on integrating multiple software into an interactive screen shot for the first few days of school. I plan to let my students use the whiteboard and go through the class orientation, which will include word, inspiration, excel, teachertube, and the whiteboard itself when it comes to them making the classrooms.

The more I work on different software, the more I learn about a different software. I copied diagrams from Inspiration and pasted them into word, then placed that word documment back into a hyperlink for an Inspiration presentation. My plan is to have my first syllabus finished and posted within an inspiration, so that I can use the whiteboard to introduce my class to my students the first day or two of school. I will add a mini-biography, grading scale, how the weigthed grading scale works by adding an Excel link, and a breakdown of every quarter of the school year.

Ideas for Word and Inspiration

2007-07-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

Today I have managed to improve my webquest I feel for the better. I used themes and planned to use templates, but Have issues when it comes to the conversion of a previously made page into a theme. I do believe that one must start fresh with the template, and move forward from there.

I have some different ideas for Inspiration. I plan to use Inspiration to introduce my class to the incoming seventh graders. I am going to map out the school year with tentative dates for each subject matter or chapter, as well as major assignments that will be due, along with Check-points and other components. I will use hyperlinks to Word to show larger documents, such as quarterly syllabi, and introductions to each chapter. I also linked Excel into the Inspiration to show how a weigthed classroom works and the types of grades that I will give.

I have looked at a lot of the different projects, I am unsure of which I will complete first. I would like to integrate them all into one, but that seems to be a daunting task for now.

July 18th Excel/Word/Webquest

2007-07-18T17:56:00.000-07:00

Today I researched a wide variety of technologies. I completed the Excel spreadsheets and learned a lot on new functions that I did not realize that it could do. The database was the most impressive function that I learned. And the fact that it can merge with other Microsoft programs makes it that much more powerful.

I am still working with Word. I guess I don't know as much as I thought I did when it comes to using that particular software. I do feel that what I have created in the past is good, I just need to learn to use some of the extra tools to make it simpler to use and visually easy on the eyes.

My second webquest is under construction. I hope to make it better than the ones I have made in the past. I would like to take the webquest class over again, as I took one about 7 years ago when I first started teaching. I plan to become craftier with these as having the students be in control of their education places ownership, and therefore, they are more opt to do the work.

Steven Clark