Twelve CH‹UH teachers and administrators attended the Ohio SchoolNET Technology Conference in Columbus on March 28 and 29. Most of the teachers were from Heights High, which is developing their building technology plan. The conference featured a number of nationally known speakers and many presentations by Ohio educators.
CH-UH staff made two presentations. The first was by Directory of Educational Resources, Diane Sielski and recent retiree, Judy Wolf. They explained how our 1999 Technology Fair was organized. You can view their presentation with pictures from the 1999 Fair at www.chuh.org/fair/ While you are at the site, make a note of the date of this year's Technology Fair on May 11. If you and your students would like to have a booth at this year's Fair, let Diane Sielski (D_Sielski@staff.chuh.org) know by April 11th.
The second presentation was made by Steve Titchenal and Joe Micheller, Director of Staff Development. They talked about the many uses we have put to databases in the CH‹UH School District. The presentation can be viewed at www.chuh.org/workshops/databases/.
Databases can provide many views of the same information allowing people to more easily understand a complex project. Creating a standard forms for data entry encourages consistency in the project documents. Placing the information in searchable and sortable form on the Web allows staff and community to participate in the process.
You may not realize that many parts of the district web site are actually databases. For example our contract is a searchable database at www.chuh.org/hr/. The Ohio Proficiency Outcomes are at www.chuh.org/standards/proficiency/. It is very interesting to do a search by verb (such as analyze), or content (such as fractions) and see which outcomes are in each grade level and content area.
A number of nationally know speakers were at the SchoolNET Conference. While I wish everyone could have attended their presentations, many of the speakers have web sites with resources that can be used by everyone.
Linda Joeseph and Linda Resch introduced Children of Yesteryear activities on their Cyberbee web site, www.cyberbee.com. There are old photographs , sound recording, motion pictures and stories related to children of the past. Each section provides a set of questions for students to answer as they examine the primary source. These could be starting points for local or family history projects. The Cleveland Public Library has the Cleveland Press Photo Collection that classes can visit. Just like any other photo archive, students must put on white gloves to handle the old photo of the Cleveland area..
Also on the Cyberbee site are many other lesson ideas including a number on the 2000 elections and a interesting collection of Campaign Memorabilia.
Annette Lamb's web site, Eduscape, (www.eduscapes.com) features a list of Cool Starting Points for Parents, Teachers and Students. Also online, is the 42eXplore section. Each week there is new topic which, includes a short explanation of the basics, ideas for activities and an annotated list of web sites. Recent topics have included dinosaurs, insects, money, the millennium, and poetry for kids.
Christa McAuliffe Educator, Alan November, emphasizes the teaching of critical thinking and community problem solving. His web site, www.anovember.com, features many of the articles he has written for national publications. You may remember his visit to the CH-UH Schools a couple of years ago as a PS21 speaker.
Noted educational futurist, David Thornburg spoke on Campfires in Cyberspace, dealing with both the history of change and the ways in which we learn. He argues that the web is the most underhyped media in education because unlike previous media it transcends both time and space. Articles based on his monthly PBS television show are at www.pbs.org/teachersource/thornburg/.