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Ron Smith, high school teacher and doctoral student
Ron Smith has been a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District for six years, most recently at Hollywood High School, teaching digital graphics and video. He came to teaching by way of photography, after being a commercial photographer and lab operator for 20 years. He holds a B.A. in Art, and an M.A. in Art Education, both from California State University, Northridge. For the last two years, Ron has been working on a doctorate in educational technology at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles.
Subscribe to this blogger's RSS feedThe Rocket Boys
By Ron Smith
1/31/07My class has about fifty computers in it, mostly older Apple G3s, but I am in the process of getting some newer ones. A few of my students decided that they would like to experiment with networked gaming
Less Is More
By Ron Smith
1/15/07William of Ockham was a fourteenth-century logician and Franciscan friar in England. He came up with the lex parsimoniae, or the law of succinctness
We'd Better Get a Bigger Keyboard!: The Imperative for a Computer for Every Student
By Ron Smith
9/20/06At its inception, computing was about machines, applied science, and nerds. It was a world for nonsocial shut-ins
Online All the Time
By Ron Smith
8/15/06I've been migrating most of my files to the Web. I use my class Web site instead of a file cabinet
Be Practically Unreasonable: You Never Know Where it May Take You
By Ron Smith
8/7/06I teach art, and I use technology to do it. I want my kids to be able to think creatively about a problem and then choose the most appropriate tech to solve it
Searching for Steven Spielberg
By Ron Smith
7/21/06I was telling my brother about some of my digital video students. I told him how they were really creative
IM in the Mood for Chat
By Ron Smith
7/5/06Every semester, I reformat my classroom computers to get old junk off and update the applications. A couple semesters ago, I decided to leave iChat (Apple's instant messaging application) active
Phone Blogging
By Ron Smith
6/30/06I'm about to begin the fall semester at Hollywood High School, in Hollywood, California, on July 5. (We are a year-round school
The Dropouts: When Kids Are Challenged and Encouraged, Great Things Happen
By Ron Smith
6/28/06At the beginning of this school year, two students were put into my Digital Production class that really didn't belong there
Digital Natives: Students Can Teach Teachers a Thing or Two
By Ron Smith
6/23/06Marc Prensky has coined the phrase "digital natives." He says that it is "the most useful designation I have found
