B ack in February (school vacation) I upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.7.1 and Thesis Theme 1.4.2. I have been intending to make a few little tweaks to how it looked, but was putting it off until I had a little "catch up" time. So, during April school vacation (I’m noticing a trend here) I spent time researching how to make the improvements I wanted. The blog, How to Make My Blog , by Marko Saric, was a great source of tips, strategies, and code. Marko writes clearly and his directions are easy to follow. One improvement I wanted to make was to change the look of the sidebar headers, and although he had done this on How to Make My Blog , I could not find instructions on how to implement a similar style. I left a comment on his site and in a matter of hours (minutes?) I had a reply with that included the needed code. Cool beans! Nice to interact so positively with such a generous (and knowledgeable) member of the blogging community.

So, if you are interested in tweaking your own WordPress and Thesis Theme blog in the following ways, check out How to Make My Blog .
> Move the top menu to below the header image.
> Add a shaded Welcome box at the top of the content column.
> Style the sidebar headers (see right).
I also learned a couple of little things to do in the settings area that aren’t visible to readers, but that are helpful.

link to How to Make My Blog

http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/

This week I was at work at a meeting where many of the participants were parents in our school district. One of the topics was a presentation on technology use at our high school . Central office administrators shared with parents some of the “best practice” accounts that we had recently seen. There was general agreement about the importance of using technology well in teaching and learning, and parents appreciated the specific examples that were presented. One parent, whose daughter is a high school freshman, told us about watching her daughter sitting downstairs at a table doing homework. Seeing this, Mom asked, “Why aren’t you sitting at your desk to do your homework?” To which her daughter replied, “I don’t need a desk. I need a laptop.”

“I don’t need a desk. I need a laptop.”

There ensued a spirited sharing about blogs and wikis and research and writing papers and the fact that a computer is the most important tool that students need to do well in school and to facilitate lifelong learning. It was a nice moment.

To view some faculty webpages, go to http://www.nsboro.k12.ma.us/algonquin/teacherindex.htm for links to these pages. Many teachers regularly update their web pages, many have blogs, and several use wikis with their students.