Anything technology related? How about the wonders of the exercise video game. One of the hottest things out there this season is the SmartCycle. My son can't stop talking about it. If a commercial for it comes on, he goes nuts. If it works, we may have one of the healthiest video game addicts out there. Both a blessing and a curse I guess. Of course, the fact is that most of these things look amazing, but then they don't work well and are a pain to operate. Luckily for us, his grandmother bought it for him, so we didn't have to spend a penny on it. My hubby and I are going lo-tech with a real bike and a child-sized Black & Decker set so that he can pretend to build.
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The other technology thing to speak of is iGoogle. I learned about it at the CSLA conference and immediately created an account for myself. It's good... not perfect... but good. Maybe it's just my computer, but the gadgets kind of "freak out" on my screen when I load the page. I've even deleted a number of them to try and solve the problem, but it's not done much good. It has some amazing possibilities if it works, though.
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I'm trying to get email for the students at my school. It's taking time though because each school must have an email sub-administrator to create and assign the accounts to them. The admins at my school have agreed that it's ok for me to do it (yet another thing on my list to do), but they never have the time to wait on hold for the ITD guys. The principal must personally call and authorize appointing me to the position. So, for a couple of months now, I've been reminding and reminding them, but it hasn't gotten me far. I'm hoping that once we do get it up and running, we can teach the students to use things like RSS and GoogleDocs. Our school doesn't have a separate server for students to log on to and/or save their work, so they either save to the hard drive and hope that no one else deletes their work later in the day, or they buy a travel drive, which most either can't afford or their parents aren't willing to buy (since they don't know what they do/how important they can be). If I can get them accounts, I can get them the ability to safely save on GoogleDocs and maybe teach them to get organized using programs like iGoogle and Google Calendar.
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Dear Lord... Google's taking over!
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The other technology thing to speak of is iGoogle. I learned about it at the CSLA conference and immediately created an account for myself. It's good... not perfect... but good. Maybe it's just my computer, but the gadgets kind of "freak out" on my screen when I load the page. I've even deleted a number of them to try and solve the problem, but it's not done much good. It has some amazing possibilities if it works, though.
.
I'm trying to get email for the students at my school. It's taking time though because each school must have an email sub-administrator to create and assign the accounts to them. The admins at my school have agreed that it's ok for me to do it (yet another thing on my list to do), but they never have the time to wait on hold for the ITD guys. The principal must personally call and authorize appointing me to the position. So, for a couple of months now, I've been reminding and reminding them, but it hasn't gotten me far. I'm hoping that once we do get it up and running, we can teach the students to use things like RSS and GoogleDocs. Our school doesn't have a separate server for students to log on to and/or save their work, so they either save to the hard drive and hope that no one else deletes their work later in the day, or they buy a travel drive, which most either can't afford or their parents aren't willing to buy (since they don't know what they do/how important they can be). If I can get them accounts, I can get them the ability to safely save on GoogleDocs and maybe teach them to get organized using programs like iGoogle and Google Calendar.
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Dear Lord... Google's taking over!
2 comments:
I'd like to hear how the SmartCycle is a week or two after the holidays. Is it all hype, or is it good for exercizing in the college dorm? or at the YMCA? or in the staff break room?
Yes, it does often seem like Google is taking over, but at this stage, it is good to see competition amongst the web 2.0 companies and their tools.
Best wishes.
- JackieS
CSLA 2.0 Team project manager
well... considering the SmartCycle is designed for 4-6 years olds... college dorms or the staff break room might be out of the realm of possibilities. I think that they're just using the same ideas that fitness clubs have been using for years. Many adults like to exercise while playing video games and/or surfing the net.
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