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Showing posts from April, 2012

Take this screen to your classroom...

ExoPC And Panama Team Up To Bring 'Tablet Desks' To Students http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/23/exopc-panama-exodesk-tablet-desk_n_1435365.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003#s891167&title=Books _

Pinterest for Teachers

The use of Pinterest has been to get visual content to drive traffic to your site, whether it is a blog site or website.  Teachers are finding Pinterest to be a site to gather content, but also share content and best practices driving traffic to their site or blog site.

Managing Employees

Employee management is more than simply ensuring that timestamps are entered and correct; management is a careful balance of risk management, mentoring, quality control and directing. As any manager goes about carrying out the work of the organization, the overriding quality is that of the manager and his or her relationships.  That is to say, every interaction is colored by the way in which the words are delivered, the intent behind the message and the humanity of the manager. People are managers every day. They require no certification, no stamp of approval other than being selected for a job which requires overseeing the work of others and then suddenly, POOF: you are a manager.  The Hawaii Employers Council delivered this management training which specifically addressed: Management Fundamentals and Legal Concerns Fundamental of Improving Employee Performance Harassment Avoidance Training Management is required to conduct confidential inquiries and to practice using unbias

Management Excellence

The Management Excellence workshop covered material focused on management fundamentals, improving employee performance and harassment avoidance. A few of the topics that I found particularly useful included: counseling employees, legal & policy concerns, manager’s liabilities, checklist for correcting poor performance and the importance of documentation.  Below are some useful takeaways from the training: Performance Documentation Basics  Facts What happened? When did it happen? Where did it happen? Who was involved?  Objectives What are the performance expectations? When were they communicated? Solutions What forms of assistance/coaching were offered? Actions What are the consequences for no improvement? Checklist for Correcting Poor Performance Rules and Standards Have they been communicated verbally and in writing to employees to their understanding? Enforcement Has the company consistently enforced violations of this rule or standard? Investi

Benefits and Barriers of Online Learning from "The District Goes Digital" Webinar

Last month, I attended an informative webinar called "The District Goes Digital: Leveraging Online Learning for Broader Student Achievement." The main presentation focused on Falcon School District 49, a geographically large district near Colarado Springs, CO. This troubled district brought in Kim McClelland as an assistant superintendent of online learning to help move their educational offerings into the digital world. During the webinar, McClelland shared many of her successes and some of the barriers she faced during this traditional district's transition to blended and online learning. Before the District could remedy the problems present in its public education system, Falcon had to take a candid look at what their needs really were. The district was losing students to other schools and therefore also losing some of their tax base. As a result, the education issues that already existed were compounded by financial shortfalls. Luckily, the switch to online learning h

Excel: Pivot Tables and VLookups

Microsoft Excel has many features that can help you make aggregating data or information.  Pivot tables are one of the most powerful features of Excel.  A pivot table is a great reporting tool that allows you to sorts and sums independent of the original data layout in the spreadsheet.  This cuts down on the manual counting and human errors. Pivot tables are also useful for quickly creating unweighted cross tabulations. Pivot Tables: How a pivot table works Find a spreadsheet you have with lots of data that include column headers. Select all the data in the worksheet by clicking in the box at the top left hand corner of the spreadsheet. Go to Insert and click on Pivot Table. It will verify the data selection and ask you if you want to create this on a new spreadsheet. On a new spreadsheet, you will see a new sheet with a box labeled Pivot Table 1. On the other end you will see a screen that has the fields.  On the bottom of that you will see four items: Report Filter,

Divergent Thinkers

As I was attending the STEM conference put on by a national organization.  This was shared in one of the sessions.  It has a clear statement about Divergent Thinkers and how we need to allow students to create and question meaning for learning rather than boxing them into a manufactured version.

ADDIE Model Infographic

We have developed our own system for using the ADDIE Model design process, but here is a cool and easy to understand info graphic to explain what the ADDIE Model is. I thought this was really good because it outlined in simple terms what the phase involves and what the key deliverables were going to be.  This is helpful many situations as our projects differ in the services needed. Click here to see enlarged image.