On to Oracle

Oracle Academy is offering a free course to teachers to become Oracle certified. After Oracle, I will be learning Alice and Greenfoot. Computer training never ends. Game IT has also offered over 10,000 educators a free game design course which I am also currently learning/teaching. Never a dull moment in the life of a business education teacher.

Mission Trip To Roatan, Honduras

I just returned from a two week visit to Roatan, Honduras. Our mission was to help the government schools on the island. We visited many schools from one end of the island to the other. Our visit began on the West End at Sandy Bay where we visited the Sand Castle After School care and library. Cam O'Brien is an awesome administrator and we worked with one of her helpers. The children there loved their computer lab. The lab had about seven computers with internet access in one area and two more computers in another area. The students completed homework using the computers as well as played games online. I had the privilege of showing the students how to play connect four and battleship while my son and his friend built what they called a Catapult. The children enjoyed shooting coconuts across the beach.

Then we were off to a small private school in French Harbor. We are hoping to Skype with this school soon. The high school principal only has one student who is learning basic programming skills. I am hoping to teach game design soon so maybe we will be able to Skype then. Or maybe he will be interested in web design and we could Skype during one of our lessons.

Next we were off to Pandy Town near Oak Ridge. The school is held in a Methodist Church. This was the first school that the students from Norfolk Christian visited. Our students enjoyed teaching math, science, English, Bible and singing. They all enjoyed recess where the boys were able to play soccer and the girls painted the little girls finger nails. The school administrator stated they had 5 computers; however, they were unable to install them due to security issues. She is hoping to acquire land and build a new school up on the hill near their concrete soccer court.

And finally the highlight of my trip was the school in Diamond Rock. We drove past this school several times, but the school seemed vacant. We visited Camp Bay Resort to drop off our scuba divers and spoke with one of the cooks and found out the school was open. We dropped by unannounced to see if we would be able to help in any way. I worked a little with reading English while one of the students at the school read the same book in Spanish then onto a math lesson before I was pulled to the computer lab. This lab had eleven computers and an A/C. I was in heaven. I did not try to teach too much computer simply because to be honest, I was in shock. I am hoping to take some conversational Spanish before next year in hopes of spending more time in this school.

In conclusion, our trip was a huge success. The Skype adventure will help Norfolk Christian meet our goals of connecting globally and the mission trip should become an annual event. Until next post . . . .

Jing Use in Student Learning

Jing is an online screen capture application. The free version gives you five minutes to capture and record your screen and lesson. In my

Design, Multimedia, and Web Technologies course, I had my students take different chapters of their Photoshop textbook and create a review project using Jing. They turned out wonderfully. Below is one of the examples.

Summer 2012 Begins

Summer is finally here. A busy year learning and teaching Photoshop CS5 and AutoCAD 2012 this past year. Now onto creating an online course for students of Norfolk Christian to add to their busy schedules. The course will be entitled Advanced Microsoft and will be hosted by Edmodo. While I have been fortunate enough to take many online courses, this will be my first attempt at developing an online course. Wish me luck.

HRACS Winter Conference 2012

We offered many new programs this year. One of my favorites is Edmodo.com. Edmodo is an online classroom. You are able to attached Word documents, videos, make quizzes, and much more. The code to get into the HRACS site is c7hva7. Give it a try and see what you think. The site has communities that you are also able to become involved in. I joined two so check it out. Another site we introduced this year is one of my old time favorites, Quizlet.com. While Quizlet is not a good test generator, it is awesome at vocabulary building. Another tool we found was Classtools.net. Classtools has tons of cool gadgets for teaching. You can download your class list into a random name generator to make sure your students are paying attention to your lesson. It also has a countdown clock which is helpful for those times when you want to give your students time to think. Finally, we also discussed the advantages of online bookmarking. I personally use Portaportal.com. My guest name is teanderson. Have fun and check out the new resources.

Busy Year at a Glance

Wow it has been a busy year. Two new preps which include AutoCAD 2012 and Photoshop CS5. Both programs are huge, but are really fun to teach. Tomorrow I have the privilege to present at the HRACS Winter Workshop at Greenbrier Christian School. We will be sharing many new free online resources. It should be an awesome seminar.

Complete

Capstone II What an Adventure. Working with fantastic educators throughout the State of Virginia was a dream come true. It is impossible to explain everything that was learned during this adventure. Above you will find a brief video capturing the highlights of my adventure. I hope you enjoy!!