March 1, by Mr. Kootman

Hi everyone! I figured I would do my own blog post while I was gone. Today I woke up earlier than usual because I had to pack my car for a trip to Palm Springs, California. Palm Springs is really just a nice town in the middle of the desert. I gets really really hot in the summer, but this time of year the weather is perfect. The humidity is very low though, so it feels extremely dry.

So I set off for what should have been a two hour drive, but it took almost three hours due to road construction. Watch out for traffic! When I arrived I had to go register for the conference I will be attending and speaking at. The conference is for a group I belong to called Computer Using Educators or CUE for short. Cue has several thousand members across all of California and our goal is to use computers in schools to help our students learn. Needless to say, there’s some pretty cool things here! It’s great being around other teachers who also love to integrate technology in their classrooms. I wish you could see all the cool things that are available, like smart boards (white boards that a computer can interact with) or student response systems (every students get a remote control to answer questions with). Maybe someday we’ll get these things too!

The conference is broken down into short sessions, or hour long classes, each about a different topic. I attended many sessions today and learned some new things, like how to use Google Earth in the classroom. I hope to learn a lot more in the next few days. I’m even giving a session of my own on Saturday! I’ll let you know how it goes. I hope everyone is enjoying having Mrs. Witt as a substitute; I’m looking forward to a good note from her when I return ;) Have a great weekend and get outside in the gorgeous weather! By the way, if you get this early enough, could someone tell Devyn that today is his day to do the blog; happy writing Devyn!

Take a look at the photo and notice the windmills and the mountains in the background. What do you think the windmills are for?