Blogs on Teacher Development

In Edutopia video segments, you often see teachers and students using a television in place of a computer monitor to provide better access to visual information. The reasons for using the television instead of the monitor are pretty straightforward: The television has a larger screen, and it can be placed higher so that there are no "bad seats."

The exhibits at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) are housed in an enormous, loud room with vendors eagerly trying to grab your attention and pitch their products. They range from large publishing houses to new software companies and Web site purveyors to providers of full curricula for K-12 schools.

Every 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, although I did not put the icon on the desktop, nor did I tell the kids.

I'm about to begin the fall semester at Hollywood High School, in Hollywood, California, on July 5.