177 – A Tech and Learning Goldmine

This week on the WELSTech Podcast we review Tech & Learning magazine and talk with Rachel Malkuch about using tech tools for student evaluation.

The discussion:

A magazine for today’s teachers – Teacher Gail Potratz from Emanuel in New London, WI makes her once-a-month guest appearance on WELSTech and joins Martin and Sallie in a discussion of the online and print magazine Tech & Learning.

• Tech & Learning subscriptions
  • Print magazine
  • Digital magazine
  • K-12 Education e-news
• Top 10 Sites for Educational Resources
  • Thinkfinity
  • Super Teacher Worksheets
• A-Z Web Tools: C & D
  • Clayanimator
  • Corkboard.me
  • DoppelMe
  • Disposable Web Page
• A Personal Learning Network for Parents – As PTO interest and involvement declines, these new ideas may be useful for making parent connections
• Going Digital … Ten Points To Consider When Transforming Towards Digital Curriculum – Covering such topics as the necessary infrastructure needed to support cloud-based computing and the importance of professional development for teachers

The interview:

(19:55) Alternative assessment with technology – Teacher Rachel Malkuch (aleixa on Twitter and blogger at Learn for a Lifetime) from Trinity in Waukesha, WI chats with Sallie about her recent presentation to the Milwaukee-Metro Teachers’ Conference on the use of Technology as means of Alternate Assessment.

• Rachel’s blog post about her presentation
• Rachel’s presentation resources
• Principal David Schroeder’s podcast blog
• RubiStar
• Prezi

Ministry resources:

(34:16) Release of the Glo Bible for Mac and iPad – Watch the iPad demo

Picks of the week:

• (35:42) knoword.org
• Facebook Friending 101 for Schools from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog
• ActiveInbox

Of interest:

(45:21) FinalWeb Training in New Ulm, MN and Milwaukee, WI

• FinalWeb for Teachers in New Ulm on June 27 and Milwaukee on August 1 – bit.ly/fw4teachers
• FinalWeb for Dummies in New Ulm June 28-30 and Milwaukee August 2-4 – bit.ly/fw4dummies

Community feedback:

• (47:21) Following up on our Office 2010 podcast, Martin found an additional set of training videos.
• David Schumann from Peace in Janesville, WI is looking for help addressing the needs of band-width impaired members and visitors who cannot access many of the resources on today’s web sites.  How does your church meet those needs?
• Mark Blauert, a Staff Minister from Trinity in Crete, IL, is looking for all types of church web site policy examples.  Check out this growing list of resources:
  • WELSTech Wiki > Technology Planning (Add a copy of your site policies to the wiki!)
  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
  • Writing and Style Guidelines
  • Content Management System Best Practices
  • Web Privacy
  • Password Policy
• WELS Webmaster, Julie Duran, shared two helpful links:
  • Broken Link Check
  • RGB to Hexadecimal converter
• In the WELSTech Diigo Group Jason Schmidt, Martin, and Nancy Marks linked us to …
  • Adventure Learning from the University of Minnesota
  • Google Upgrades AdWords for Non-Profits
  • Password Safe
• Tom Hausmann and John Shoosmith sent in praise for the WELSTech audio quality, expertly produced each week by our audio engineer extraordinaire, Martin Spriggs.

Coming up on WELSTech:

(55:43) Episode 178 – A month of “April Showers” await WELSTech listeners, and first up is a shower of webmaster resources.  (Release date – 04/06/11)

The featured artist:

(56:51) We close the podcast with the music of Mike Westendorf (www.mikewestendorf.com and mikewestendorf on Twitter) – Blessed is The One from his CD titled “Undefined”

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