TCEA 2009 Legislative Session

Tcea 2009 Legislative Session by Texas Legislature
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TCEA 2009 Legislative Session.mp3 (12678 KB)

This is a partial recording of the Legislative Session at TCEA 2009. I'm sure glad I wasn't representing the textbook companies because they seemed to be in the line of fire from some in the Texas legislature.

Are textbook companies becoming obsolete? Can they retool to meet the ever changing digital needs of schools? Only time will tell but change is always slow....and inevitable. I see a huge opportunity for textbook companies to repackage their content in engaging and interactive ways and still stay profitable. If played right, it could be a win-win for their companies and for our schools.

Posted via email from John Maklary

TCEA 2009 Pictures - Finally!

TCEA 2009

Tags: tcea09

Geography and Third Grade - A Shameless Request

It must be the timing of when third graders learn certain things. Recently, I read a post by Karl Fisch about a geography project his daughter is engaged in. My son, who is a third grader here in Texas, was just assigned a similar project where he needs to gather information from around the country and the world. Specifically, he chose to send the actual paper request to our good friend in Oregon (who also happens to be a middle school social studies teacher). Since we lived there for nine years, it was an obvious choice.

So, in my most transparent (and shameful?) manner, I am going to flatter Karl with imitation (and maybe some extra Map 2.0 stuff) and ask you to post some information about where you are from. There are two places to make your mark...

1. Ben's Geo-Journal Wiki Page (similar to Karl's) to post information about your area of the world.
2. Ben's Geo-Journal Google Map where you can post a place mark from where you are.

Thank you all for doing this. My son will appreciate it and will send a Thank You email to anyone who posts information and their email address.



Tags: maklary, edtech

Publicly Editable Google Maps - Making Connections

One of the neat things I recently discovered with Google Maps is the ability to make a publicly editable map where many different people can contribute. For example, an initiative for more face-to-face meetings after the wonderful Classroom 2.0 Live in Houston took a foothold among several participants. We really want to continue the conversations, sharing and learning with our local brethren, both in a virtual sense and a physical sense. To help facilitate that, I created a public Google Map so that interested people can geographically place themselves in order to get a better idea where everyone is (the Houston area is VERY large and meeting places will need to reflect the least amount of travel for the most people). I also created a screencast entitled Adding Placemarks to Google Maps to help folks who may not be familiar with inputting placemarks. Fun stuff!







Tags: cr20tx08, edtech, technology, education, maklary, john maklary, google maps, houston

Classroom 2.0 Storms Houston

In what was a nice run-up to NECC next week, last Friday, June 20, I had the opportunity to participate in Classroom 2.0 Live in Houston, Texas. Steve Hargadon and Stephanie Sandifer co-hosted the event and there were many eager-to-learn participants that enjoyed discussing the many web 2.0 tools that can help classroom teachers.



This workshop was a great opportunity for me personally to meet, face to face, many of the folks I converse with online. One of the ideas that came from it that I'd like to see happen in the future is for Houston-area ed tech (and non-ed tech) folks to gather face-to-face periodically to extend the conversations about all things tech and more Texas and Houston specific topics. This idea was originally put out there by Chris Duke and I hope it will take fruition soon.

Steve shared one site of note that I thought was interesting. It is Weebly, a really cool and easy way to create websites by dragging and dropping embeddable components. My eight year old took an immediate liking to it and started dropping all sorts of media to create his first page. I think this tool could be a great way to introduce younger children to creating content that is dynamic and fun.

See many of you at NECC next week! I am SO looking forward to the conversations and the networking and ways to better implement technology for my teachers and students.

Eat more ribs! ;-)

Tags: cr20tx08, edtech, necc, john maklary, maklary, technology, education, weebly, web2.0

TCEA 2009 Sessions Accepted

I just received an email from TCEA yesterday announcing that both my workshop offerings for the 2009 conference were accepted. Yea!

1. Google Earth - Ideas for the Classroom (3 hr.)
2. GarageBand in the Classroom (3 hr.)

Note to self: Next time, come up with more interesting titles!

Now, I have some work to do.

Tags: tcea2009, john maklary, maklary, edtech, google earth, garageband