When I was younger I shared a room (and bed) with my brother Jaime, I always had a flashlight and book nearby. I’d read until I was done and then go down to the bathroom before falling asleep. If my parents were still up, I’d get yelled at for being up. I remember being dragged [...]

Posted in books, cybersalonaz

Claire came over to my couch to say good night today as I was clicking on a link I saw from some Twitter feed. Suddenly the We Give Books website pops up with the book Goodnight, iPad, which is a tech parody of Goodnight, Moon. This original book is a staple in our house (Claire [...]

Posted in books, cybersalonaz

My current teaching contract commenced in 2004 and soon afterward social media, for me, sky rocketed. A short time later, most of my communicative life moved into what very few people at the time knew as “the cloud”. Facebook was still locked to the universities and Yahoo! was still a huge stock option for many [...]

Posted in blogs, curriculum, cybersalonaz, Education Reform, google, google calendar, google docs, laptop, nostalgia, policy, rhetoric, student2.0, teacher2.0, technology

I enrolled in graduate school at Duquesne University in spring 1998 to begin work on my Master’s degree in English Education. I was excited to get into the classroom and work with students. My internship was at Baldwin High School where I was a student myself. It was surreal giving my sister a hall pass [...]

Posted in cybersalonaz

More this past several months than anytime in the past I have had to sign PDFs that someone emailed me. Now, I love PDFs but I hate that they’re not really editable unless you have the correct software: Acrobat Adobe X. I was able to acquire the software but still had issues. Most of the [...]

Posted in cybersalonaz, tutorials

Many of today’s high school students are moving toward reading their books on “e-readers” or mobile devices (like their phones and itouches). There are many advantages (and still some disadvantages). While people are stratified on the notion of mobile devices in high school classrooms, for those of us who permit them to read on them [...]

Posted in cybersalonaz, publications, school, technology, writing

Karen Cator Direction, Office of Education Technology US Dept of Ed on Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Tech #mec2011 Cator was introduced by John Huppenthal, Arizona Superintendent of Public Schools. National Education Technology Plan introduced in fall through Drupal, and they said it was a “draft” because this is a working document that is [...]

Posted in conferences, curriculum, cybersalonaz, Education Reform, presentations, school, technology, web2.0

1. Upload PDF to Google Docs, make PUBLIC and COPY the LINK 2. Go to your Google Site, click wherever you want to embed pdf 3. Click on INSERT [all the way left]–> MORE GADGETS [very bottom of list] 4. In Gadget search box, search for “Google Docs Viewer” 5. Click on the top one [...]

Posted in cybersalonaz, google, google sites, technology

I am a convert. In 1998 I got my first cell phone while in graduate school. I went with Sprint and don’t really know why now, but it was the place to be back then. That first phone lasted about a year until this cool new Nokia came out (I can’t even begin to tell [...]

Posted in applications, cybersalonaz, droid, gadgets, google, iphone, itouch, mac, technology

Ok, ladies & gentlemen, drum roll please! You can now a Google Document and/or Google Document Folder with a Google Group. When you do, every member of that group is now shared to that Google Doc file/folder. I teach high school using Google Docs and have 100+ students in Google Groups. I use to have [...]

Posted in cybersalonaz, google, google docs, google groups, online, student2.0, teacher2.0, technology