I am looking to revamp our school website as I am not happy with the rather clunky ‘look and feel’ of it.
Please let me know of any standout school sites you know of!!!!

I am keen to have a largely static website with Web2.0 sites linked from it that have the ‘dynamic content’ on them.

Thanks in anticipation Greg

“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.” Mark Twain

thanks Derek for highlighting this one. I am now using it a lot and particularly with kids…. a great tool!
http://www.searchme.com/

I am using Firefox3 beta and love it. It certainly appears to be much faster and the interface is slick.
I have had no issues with buggyness to this point. I found these tips via Lifehacker today though:

One thing that you may not realize is how many different actions can be performed simply by dragging and dropping text or URL’s in Firefox. Most browsers actually support similar actions, but we thought it would be useful to provide an overview of the different ways you can put it to work.
You can drag and drop…

* a URL (hyperlinked or not) onto the address bar to immediately be taken to that site in the current tab.
* a URL (hyperlinked or not) onto an existing tab or blank tab to immediately replace it with the new URL.
* a URL (hyperlinked or not) onto an empty area on the tab bar to immediately have that URL opened in a new background tab.
* highlighted text onto the address bar to replace the URL with the text, but it will not be executed immediately.
* a single highlighted word (cannot contain spaces) onto an existing tab or blank tab to replace it with www.[highlighted word].com immediately. Where [highlighted word] is the single word you were dragging and dropping.
* a single highlighted word (cannot contain spaces) onto an empty area on the tab bar to immediately have www.[highlighted word].com opened in a background tab. Where [highlighted word] is the single word you were dragging and dropping.
* an image onto the address bar to immediately have that image open in the current tab.
* an image onto an existing tab or blank tab to immediately replace it with the image.
* an image onto an empty area on the tab bar to immediately have the image opened in a new background tab.

source

remember this?

This is an amazing site that links a variety of micro-loan orgnisations from around the world in a website. You can choose specific projects to support as well as see information about the people and their lives, risk profiles etc. You can also invite others to contribute/participate in the site and projects - “social networking for good”!

check out this YouTube video:

Emotional but inspirational talk. Very TED talkish.
long but worth the effort

One of the cool things about being married to a Speech Language Therapist is being paseed wee gems like this:

Does your child have good hearing but listen poorly?

Some parents refer to this as selective hearing, but your child may actually have trouble listening. While hearing is the ability to detect sound, listening is how the brain processes auditory information.

Children with poor auditory processing skills tend to exhibit the following problems:

• Trouble hearing or easily distracted in noisy environments.
• Hard time following a conversation or following directions.
• Disorganized and forgetful.
• Problems with reading, comprehension, spelling and/or writing.
• Trouble recalling a story in proper sequence.
• Difficulty understanding verbal math problems.

Auditory Processing problems closely mimic AD/HD symptoms, and children are often misdiagnosed. If a child is having trouble processing auditory information, he or she will often appear to be inattentive.

read the rest of the article HERE

this link is to a great entry from Allanah detailing an activity she saw…. love it.

There are lots of creative things you can do with a digital camera and I must admit I find image often more useful at school than video. Video just takes sooooo much time for many children and I find myself asking if the message is sufficiently different, powerful or meaningful to justify the time it has taken to produce….

Can be a challenging question to ask about lots of technology-based sharing of learning. Does the end really justify the means or is it simply ‘technifying’, and making a simple thing complicated and time consuming?

I am interested in using technologies to improve learning not become a suck on the precious classroom time.
What do you think? If it is not better with the technology and it simply takes a lot longer to produce an electronic version, is the learning improved? It may be different, but is it improved?
Can we then justify the time spent? I struggle to answer anything other than a resounding NO.