Geese Visit A Turtle Pond in Central Park

Read More

Wonder Wheel

I saw a new application listed on the Google tools the other day, Wonder Wheel. I was doing a Google search of "metaphor" and when I pushed Wonder Wheel here is what I got:
To find Wonder Wheel, go to www.google.com and select WEB in upper left corner in Classic Google. On left see tools and scroll down the list until you will see Wonder Wheel. You may have to click "search more tools" to see Wonder Wheel. Have Fun, I did. This is a fine research tool.

Read More

A boy and his bunny find a branch

Read More

From the Cockpit

This is the view of my classroom from my cockpit. I run my class from behind two computers. The computer on the left runs on Windows. I use it to maintain attendance and to view the scholars' work on their webpages as their work appears on the Internet. The screen is a blog that speaks to the scholars and allows me to view their published work. On the right computer, a Mac, I run Remote Desktop that allows me to view each scholar's computer. While each scholar works, I can observe what is being done and when necessary take control to help fix something. While I sit and observe, I am able to speak to each scholar about hir work. The scholars often request I take a look and provide feedback or help with a question. I do get up and walk around and sit near a student when this is necessary, but for the most part we like it best when I'm in the cockpit. They know I'm observing and when they wander off to a site that is not relevant to our work, I can intervene and suggest the scholar quickly return to the task or do it myself.

I call what I do sometimes, brain surgery, because I can actually watch their brains work as they write and edit. Perhaps my cockpit is the brain of CyberEnglish as the left side is a Windows operating system and the right side is a MAC. Talk about power and control in a classroom.

Read More