Welcome to my website and to a new school year!! Continue to let me know how I can help you as you continue to utilize technology in your teaching. Come back to this site often, leave comments, and hopefully find a lot of useful information and links to using technology in your classroom. You can help out by sending me links or information that I can share with others.

Make sure that you check out the links to my other pages in the upper left corner of this page.

Latest News - August 31, 2009

Technology Academy Sign-ups under way:

The first class will meet on Tuesday, September 15, 2009. See your principal for an application. New teachers to Jackson County and teachers who haven't been to the academy for a long time will be considered first. Graduate credit is available if you want to take the class for credit.

Acuity News from the WVDE:

The WVDE Benchmark Assessment Team has completed updating and revising the three sets of state-authored Acuity benchmarks for math and RLA. We have corrected any flaws or errors that were reported. We also corrected the printed version of the RLA tests so that the passage does not re-print with every question. Please note, however, due to the requirements of the on-line format, the passages in the printed version are repeated for those questions that relate to more than one passage (paired or tripled passages).

Social Studies tests in grades 3 - 11 will be added to Benchmark 1 in October and to Benchmarks 2 and 3 during the 2009-10 school year. Biology (grade 10) will be added to Benchmarks 1 and 2 by October and to Benchmark 3 by Christmas. Chemistry (grade 11) will be added to Acuity in 2010-11. You can view a list of current and future tests here.

The WVDE recommended dates for Acuity benchmark testing are:

Benchmark 1: October 19 - November 6
Benchmark 2: December 14 - January 15
Benchmark 3: March 1 - March 31

We will be pulling WVEIS scheduling data into Acuity on August 31. This will create all classes and rosters for teachers who have classes in any of the four content areas; math, RLA, science and social studies. Note that this process will only create and roster those classes if they are correctly added to WVEIS prior to August 31.

We will have an automated roster refresh process in place this year. This process will update the Acuity rosters from WVEIS data semi-weekly. This process will pull WVEIS scheduling data into Acuity every other week. Student moves and additions will be kept up-to-date in Acuity as long as they are made in WVEIS scheduling. This will eliminate the need for administrators to manually move or add students in Acuity.

You may log into Acuity now using the same username and password that you used last year. Any school administrator can log in and view teacher accounts, reset passwords, or create new accounts for teachers and students. If you do not know your Acuity username or password, see your school administrator for help. You can also reply to this email for assistance.

Because Prior Year Reports in Acuity previously only worked with diagnostic tests, which we do not use, we asked CTB/McGraw-Hill to make these reports available for our custom tests (all Acuity tests in WV). They will be implementing this fix over the Labor Day weekend. Prior Year Reports will be available again September 8th.

You can find the latest Acuity status here: http://wvde.state.wv.us/oaa/acuity.php.


Writing Roadmap - A message from Dr. Rhudy - WVDE:


I hope the new school year is off to a good start for you. I know that many teachers are eager to start using Writing Roadmap 2.0, but it will be a few weeks before new rosters are uploaded. Although the program, as set up for 2008-2009, remains active, any changes that you make now will not be saved during the 2009-2010 program update.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We first have to receive updated WVEIS data from all schools to send to CTB/McGraw Hill and Bookette Software, the vendors for the Writing Roadmap 2.0 program, to upload new rosters. We will be pulling WVEIS data August 31, 2009. The data then will be sent to CTB for uploading into Writing Roadmap 2.0. Please remind your schools that their data must be as complete and correct as possible as of August 31, 2009.

As soon as CTB and Bookette have completed uploading new rosters, I will let you know when Writing Roadmap 2.0 will be available for use for the 2009-2010 school year.

We also are expecting several exciting and important changes to the program, and I will be updating you of these changes soon.

In the meantime, I recommend you encourage your teachers to analyze the Online Writing scores from the Reading Language Arts portion of WESTEST 2 to identify weaknesses that need to be addressed.


Dr. Vaughn G. Rhudy



Website of the Week:

Jing! What is it?? Jing is a free piece of software that allows you to capture up to a 5 minute video recording of your screen and anything that you do on it. Once your record your screen (tutorial say) then you can post it to the Web at a location called "ScreenCast.Com". If you want to record longer videos on Jing or if you want more storage space on ScreenCast, then you'll have to pay, but for 5 minute videos and 2GB of storage, it's free!!

Check these two great sites out at: http://www.jingproject.com and http://www.screencast.com .


Podcasting..what is it?

Podcasting in Education - Introduction - What is Podcasting? (Video) This video will introduce you to the world of Podcasting. The video discusses the many areas of podcasting, ITunes, RSS feeds, how to record a podcast, and other items as well. Next week look for part 2 on Meeting Standards with Podcasting and an interview with a 7th grade middle school teacher on how she is using podcasting in her classroom.

Here is another video on Podcasting. This video, Meeting Standards with Podcasting, is an interview with a 7th grade middle school teacher who explains how she is using podcasting in her teaching and the excitement of her students in doing them.

The last video in this series is An Administrator's view on Podcasting. This is an interview with a middleschool administrator and how he uses podcasting to reach out to the community by posting podcasts to the school's website about things happening around the school. He also talks about how he is implementing podcasting throughout the school.

Podomatic: A website that allows you to record video or audio podcasts and the site also will host your podcasts. Check out my first Podcast. (remember it is my first attempt!!) Interested in trying this out and need some coaching?? Let me know!! I haven't completely checked the site out yet for content. I would be careful directing students to the Podomatic site to just explore without checking it out first. I just found out that once you become a member...all of your podcasts are public and are on their public site!! I will take a closer look at the site before going too far!! I'll keep you posted and you do the same...thanks!

A Fun Educational Website for Teachers and Kids Pre-K through 6th Grade. This site includes fun holiday activities as well as many other educational resources and games. Please take time to check out the Apples 4 The Teacher website.

Last Week's Site:Cell Biology Web Resources from SAS (Quick Launch # 678). You will need to have a login name and password to the SAS site. See my page on SAS under 21st Century Learning.

Previous Winners:Need a PowerPoint Presentation? Check out this site with hundreds of presentations in all subjects areas!

Enchanted Learning (over 20000 Webpages - $20.00 a year to subscribe...some stuff is FREE!)

EdTech Magazine: Lessons plans that infuse technology into your classroom

Email: ddaniel@access.k12.wv.us