Search Results for: blog keeping in touch with technology

New Ways Technology is Helping With Autism

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There are many different forms of technology that can be used to help children who have autism. Some can be used to help a child who is on the autism spectrum to communicate with others. Some can be used to detect signs of autism in children. Others help parents learn more about their child. Right now, there are many public schools that are using iPads with students who have autism. The touch screen makes it very easy for kids to use it. Teachers can load it with apps like iPrompt which uses pictures and icons to help a child who … Continue reading →

More Dangers of Technology

As an educator there is nothing more important to me than transmitting knowledge. The name of the game, essentially, is a transfer of information between individuals. This is not simply a one-way street as I often learn a great deal from my students. The general flow, however, is one from the teacher to the students. Anything that aids that flow is helpful… and anything that hinders it is counter-productive. Great technologies have aided that flow. The printing press enabled the creation of affordable books for the masses. These books transmitted knowledge and thus aided education. While book costs are sometimes … Continue reading →

The Move to Technology

Technology is a good thing. Airplanes fly, e-mail doesn’t require a stamp, and finding information doesn’t require a trip to the library (or even the bookshelf) because of the internet and the computer. In education the move to technology has also brought many improvements and benefits to older ways of doing things (I would not have completed a masters thesis if not for the modern word processor as a typewriter would have driven me mad). There are downsides to technology though. Oftentimes digital presentation software will replace the skill of speaking (both for teacher lectures and student presentations). When I … Continue reading →

Keeping in Touch with Technology

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In a recent conversation with my Uncle via e-mail, who lives more than 1000 miles away from me, I brought up an incident involving video chat over the internet. My wife and I had recently chatted with our 9 month old nephew, Oliver, via video chat. He smiled, laughed, crawled (his new trick), and even managed to spit out a garbled “Mommmm” right before our very eyes… or, well, computer screens. My Uncle suggested “Maybe you could build a blog post around keeping in touch with the new media and grandparents who are old media.” And so it began. This … Continue reading →

Keeping Up With Trends

While there is definitely such a thing as being too trendy, it can still be important when operating a home business to try to stay somewhat “in touch” with what is going on and what the latest and greatest trends are—both within your field and in the world at large. Trade magazines and specialty publications are an excellent source of information about current and upcoming trends in various fields of business and interest. It may be worth your while to purchase or subscribe to one or two so you can stay current on what’s going on. Newspapers and related Web … Continue reading →

Separated But Not Really

Sometimes it takes the insights of someone else to come to the realization about an issue in your life.  That was the case when fellow blogger Michele Cheplic recently posted, “No Chance to Miss Your Kid.”  The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. My 18-year-old son is two weeks away from graduating technical school (Security Forces) at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.  His first duty station is going to be Turkey, which we anticipated to not happen until March. Yesterday I received word from him that his orders to go will likely be earlier, possibly the beginning of February.  … Continue reading →

High-Tech Photo Tools

High-tech tools are making it harder and harder to miss photo opps. Today, you can find smartphones that are equipped with the same mechanics featured in upscale digital cameras. BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre and HTC Touch, are just a few handheld gadgets that allow people to keep in touch with family and friends and shoot incredible photos at the same time. However, these high-tech devices aren’t the only inventions created to aid shutterbugs. Free photo organization and editing tools are also part of the package, including: Photo Session: Recently, Flickr unveiled a social image-sharing app called Photo Session. The app … Continue reading →

Online Videos and Learning?

In my last post I sort of mused about the problem of criminalizing technologies in schools (and viewing them, rightfully, as an opportunity to disengage as well as engage). The problem I have with some of the standard views I’ve seen in schools is that they decide that because something could be used for ill (a kid could, potentially, use a laptop in class to look at a social networking site or something) that they need to block the possibility entirely. Grade schools and high schools are not alone in this unfortunate action. My graduate work at a state university … Continue reading →

Find Family Photos Lost in Tornado on Facebook

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A woman in Carthage, Missouri has put together a very special Facebook page. It is designed to help people who lost their family photos in the tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri, to potentially find them. This may be the first time that a social media website was used to reunite families with the lost photos of their relatives and ancestors. A woman named Abi Almandinger, who lives in Carthage, Missouri, wanted to do something to help the people who lived in Joplin, Missouri. Joplin was hit by a tornado on May 22, 2011. In many cases, people lost everything they … Continue reading →

Type, type, type

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Our son has a new favorite activity: typing. He loves typing. I’ve written before about his love of all things technology. One of my proudest moments as a father (and yes, this is sort of strange) was the day I caught him trying to plug the cord for a keyboard into the back of a monitor. He knew that the two went together and that the keyboard made the monitor do things. A proud day for Dad. Ever since then I’ve known that our son loves technology. I suppose it is no surprise that he does. I’m not very old … Continue reading →