Saturday, May 31, 2008

What if every teacher or parent incorporated one technology tool into an everyday event?



Is the price of gas to high for the traditional vacation? Take a virtual field trip using Google Earth or just Google virtual field trips and visit somewhere you wanted to visit like the Smithsonian, Musuem of Modern Art, MoMA, Guggenheim Musuem.

Monday, May 19, 2008

FAFSA

I do not remember filling out a paper based FAFSA when I went to my first brick and mortar college (University of Florida) many years ago but later in life as an adult student I remember filling the FAFSA out electronically and conducting a FAFSA renewal for the following years to keep my information up to date.

Students in Georgia have the option to fill out the FAFSA from the primary FAFSA site:
http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ or through GAcollege411 http://www.gacollege411.org/ where the student's selections for college, SAT/ACT scores, grants, scholarships, and other required information is consolidated.

When did you have your first discussion with your parents about income and whether or not they filed a 1040, 1040A, or EZ? I asked my mother and neither of us can recall discussing taxes for FAFSA, scholarship, or grant information. Then again I was one of many students whose parents expected us to go to college but no plan of action, no supplemental savings, and no internet access. Progression is a good thing.

Students today have the internet connectivity whether from home, school, or local library. As a participative parent, I conducted scholarship workshops at the local library in December and January as parents were consolidating tax paper work. I attended a couple of local FAFSA workshops and the paper version was still strongly encouraged. The workshops I conducted were in the computer lab at the library and part of the workshop was visiting the reference book section with the printed scholarship books and the paper copy of the FAFSA application then back to the computer lab to access GAcollege411 accounts, FAFSA, fastweb.com, and brokescholar.com.

It was amazing to see the difference in students who are encouraged or required to complete resumes in middle/high school, network with adults outside of family and school to acquire community service connections, and those students who networked with adults with whom they could ask for a letter of reference and those students who are not encouraged or required.

The students growing up digital create e-portfolios, websites as online resumes, social networking spaces because they can, they are internetworked connected, and building computer and online social networking skills is just another part of the lifelong learning process.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Suggestion form on RCBoEd website

Finally...RSS feeds and a suggestion form available on the RCBoEd web site. For many of us digital parents it is nice to see the website crawling onto the bridge over the digital chasm.

We thank Dr. Bedden for the many improvements he has made to the RCBoEd website. Accessing the RCBoEd homepage from school computers is still slow from some of the school computers used by the students. The 2 click rule is also not incorporated into the website, eventually the digital natives will make their way into the RCBoE.

Go ahead make a suggestion to the Richmond County Board of Education:
http://www.rcboe.org/www/rcboe/site/hosting/Suggestions.html

One suggestion has been made to change the web page display name from New Page 1 to Suggestions.