Northeast Region

The Wii Fit is coming to a store near you. What is the Wii Fit? It is a part interactive scale and game board. The Wii Fit is going to revolutionize the way we exercise—or in most households in America—create the desire to exercise. According to statistics on this platform’s release in Japan, more than 1 million Wii Fits have been sold so far. In Europe the Wii Fit is selling faster than one could imagine a ‘toy’ could sell.

The appeal of this gadget is that it allows a person to set up a profile that will tell you your body fat index and then keep track of your progress as you play the games on this Wii Fit. The game even tracks your performance in doing the activities of this game, such as the positioning of your feet, etc. The Wii Fit comes in 4 training modes: Balance Games, Aerobics, Yoga, and Strength Training.

One of the best features of this game is that you can set up a Wii Fit Channel on your menu, so that you can check on your physical achievement without having to load the game. For those of you who have a Wii you know that on your menu you can check things like the weather or the news as long as you your Wii is set up on your home internet network.

As a former elementary school educator I know that this one game would’ve been an asset to me if I could have had this when I was teaching. I especially remember days when there was inclement whether and our class was unable to go outside to play or do physical education. For more information on this product you can go to the Nintendo site and check it out for yourself.

Posted by Kuauhtemoc Rodriguez at 12:05 PM | Permalink-1052 | Comments for Wii Fit Coming May 2008 (0)

I’m :0] (smiling) because of an article that was just posted on CNN describing how teenagers are showing an increase in use of emoticon’s in school assignments, instead of standard English.

The digital generation as the article refers to the youth who blog, text, and utilize symbols to denote language is quite interesting. If you are not :-0 (surprised) by what I’m writing about, its probably because you have more than likely seen it in student work that has been turned in for grading.

If you are an English teacher and think this is no :-D (laughing) matter, the CNN article states that the chairman of the National Commission of Writing at the College board believes that one day there will be no need to capitalize the beginning of sentences, and other forms of punctuation will also be retired as language assimilates into the digital age, :-o (Wow).

As an educator the insight into this phenomena that I found most interesting, was that the study found students who are into technology, are shying away from doing written assignments with computers. These digital students prefer to hand write their assignments on paper using longhand :-o (surprise). For the complete article please click here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/24/teen.writing.ap/index.html

Posted by Kuauhtemoc Rodriguez at 9:59 AM | Permalink-1051 | Comments for Teen Use of Non Standard English in School (0)

Recently smartboard updated their notebook software from version 9.5 to version 10, which is available for download for both the MAC and PC operating systems.

I have had the pleasure of utilizing it on both platforms thanks to a MAC running both Leopard and XP Professional. I have found that both respective OS software versions of version 10 seem stable and also offer consistent features.

The best addition's that I have seen in this particular version are the improved tools that are available to utilize with your board. Of particular benefit to classroom teacher's is the new ability to activate a document camera with the board. If your school site also has a Senteo system you'll be able to easily insert content onto your board and have your questions established for your lesson, and then utilize Senteo to ask your questions, while tabulating real time classroom responses. I can easily see this particular feature taking off and smartboard increasing its sales of the Senteo handhelds.

Other notable additions include the ability to insert Flash Video files into your notebook as well as the ability to create groupings of lessons within your notebook. With the added dual display feature, comparing two groups of notebook lessons can easily be showcased side by side. This feature enables a classroom teacher to revisit or re-teach lessons—thus increasing student understanding.

In order to maximize your download experience of version 10 make sure you have a smartboard serial number and register at www.smarttech.com . You will receive an email with the download link as well as a key that you need to type into your activation screen upon opening the software for the first time. For those of you who have a previous version installed of notebook, you will have to uninstall your previous version>restart>load version 10>restart>load new drivers for your notebook that work with version 10 more flawlessly. If you have minor bugs after installing version 10 it's probably because you didn't uninstall the old version or forgot to install the new drivers for your board.

Posted by Kuauhtemoc Rodriguez at 4:07 PM | Permalink-1050 | Comments for Smartboard Version 10 (0)

There is an even easier way to use Atomic Learning…you can access it right from your desktop after loading a quick program. Please follow the information Atomic Learning released to set it up on desktops in your school:

Atomic Learning is proud to unveil the Atomic Desktop. This complimentary downloadable tool allows users to quickly and easily access on-demand software training by offering an easy-to-use interface to search and view tutorials that answer their common 'How do I do that?" questions - all directly from their desktop without ever having to open the browser or leave a software program.

Empower your staff and students with the tools they need to fully embrace technology by installing the Atomic Desktop on an unlimited number of computers. We encourage you to implement this tool in classrooms, labs and on staff computers to help raise awareness and maximize the use of your Atomic Learning subscription.

To download the Atomic Desktop, please select the Downloadable materials tab in the Atomic Toolkit http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/atomictoolkit

Jody French, Director
EduTech ~ Fargo Office

Posted by Kuauhtemoc Rodriguez at 11:56 AM | Permalink-1048 | Comments for Atomic Learning on Your Desktop (0)

I saw this video on teacher tube and thought what a wonderful video to share with fellow educators. This video allowed me to think about the different transitions in technology that have affected schools within the last decade. If anything this video allows you to think about the effects of technology in your respective school site.

Posted by Kuauhtemoc Rodriguez at 4:33 PM | Permalink-1047 | Comments for Pay Attention Video (1)

Check out this site that contains a podcast from ND students.

http://learninginhand.com/OurCity

Your school could do one about your city and the Our City site would host this for free!

Keep tuned into podcasts since EduTech plans on releasing a Podcasting/Blogging service next year!

Posted by Tabitha Lang at 5:51 PM | Permalink-1039 | Comments for Leeds students make a podcast! (0)