Bud the Teacher

    I neglected to mention that I’ve been listening to lots of great podcast content while I’ve been offline.  Thanks to all of you who are producing honest and engaging educational content during these summer months.  You’ve been keeping my head in the game, so to speak.  I’ll be returning to the microphone soon to discuss my plans for the coming school year. 

    It’s been a quiet week month in Lake W here in Colorado.  Went away for most of the month of July, up to some very important work.  We had oceans to explore and mountains to climb and roller coasters and Ferris wheels to conquer.  Been an adventuresome summer, complete with two plane trips with a 19-month old. 
    I’m invincible.  Right.
    Looks like it’s been a pretty crazy summer online, too.  The US House passed DOPA.  Blackboard patented online learning.  Golly, maybe I’m not so invincible.  Maybe none of us are.
    I’m beginning to gear up for the fall, and I’m starting with an upgrade to Moodle 1.6.  I will never not teach with Moodle, when it makes sense to use it, and I’m curious to see how the blogging implementation worked out. 
    The Budtheteacher.com host, GoDaddy, doesn’t have the right software to support the upgrade there, and they’re not in a hurry to get it, either, so I’m moving my school’s Moodle over to the OldeSchoolNews.com server, hosted by the wonderful folks at Bluehost.  They have dealt with half a dozen phone calls from me this morning as I’ve been moving database files and student data and whatnot.  If you need a host, consider Bluehost.  Seriously. 
    I’ll be returning to regular posting here soon, as I get back into the swing of things.  While I haven’t been writing much lately, I’ve been reading a great deal.  You might notice some new blogs over in the sidebar — they’re worth a look.  I’m sure there’ll be plenty of new voices to discover as more and more teachers begin to blog, both for themselves and with their students.
    All those new voices, though, are troublesome, in a way.  I feel, and I know I’m not alone in this, that the community is far too large to keep a handle on.  More and more, I’m depending on others to filter their local nodes and networks so that I can get a feel for the good stuff.
    It’s getting crowded out here, and that’s a good thing.  But we’ve got to make sure we continue to carve out spaces where our students and ourselves can be heard and not get lost in the noise of the Internet.