Getting Started

I realize that I've been sending out lots and lots of emails to my fellow teachers at my new school, Ohr Chadash, with suggestions of websites/blogs/iPad apps. I'm beginning to feel like a nudge, so I decided to start a blog, post all suggestions to the blog and then just send them links to my blog when I post. It's much easier for me this way also.

Where am I getting all this great material to suggest? From Twitter!! I discovered twitter, among many other great discoveries at http://www.isteconference.org/2011/ last week...4 days of educational technology...great experience..maybe I'll write about it some other time. Back to Twitter. I've heard about it, used it a bit, but didn't realize the potential until I started using it as @orhchadashtech. That is, what is called, my hashtag. If you go on twitter, join, make your own hashtag and start following me. Then you can follow some of the people I follow. Most of the people I follow are in education, use technology, specifically 21st Century tools, Web2.0 tools, Jewish Education. I read their blogs, which give great real live classroom advice to using technology in the classroom, follow their links, many of which lately, were sessions many of us attended at ISTE. It's overwhelming, but I've learned so much in the last week and a half. Try it, you'll be pleased at how much you can learn. Each post is only 140 characters, so I'm learning not to be so long-winded, a problem I have with email and blogs.

The name of this blog: EdTechBubby...I have been teaching for over 40 years...have used technology in the classroom for about 1/2 of that time...I've gone from Apple 2 computers, to pc's projecting Chumash lessons made on powerpoint, to smart boards, to being a full fledged computer teaching at the now former Yeshivat Rambam. There I taught grades K-5. We used Microsoft Office and I can truly say the students I taught are proficient in many aspects of Microsoft Office, depending on what we covered in their grade. Now I am the newly hired tech teacher at the new Ohr Chadash Academy, Baltimore. I say tech teacher, and not computer teacher, because we have enough iPads for grades 4-6 and I am working on trying to integrate them into the classroom, maybe even establishing 1:1 classrooms.

The Bubby part...I am a bubby of 7 very tech savvy grandchildren...I can say I've learned a great deal from them...texting and emoticons from Eliana, great powerpoint tricks from Ezra and much much more...from all of them. I hope I can transmit what I learned from them and from my edtech colleagues to all my students, and colleagues at Ohr Chadash. I hope to share what I learn, via this blog and Twitter. Remember follow me on Twitter @ohrchadashtech.