New learning for everyone

This is my first post to our blog in a new place.
If you haven't noticed, This blog is replacing the former "Layne's Blog" on the Sioux City District Site. I hated to leave the SOCS page, but this gave us more leverage and the ability to train teachers on using blogspot for their classes.
I've dedicated my first few weeks of school to working with staff and students at West High School in getting a pilot project off the ground. The project has been a learning experience, not only for teachers and students, but for myself. 28 students in the freshman class were chosen to have mini-laptops for using in the classroom and OUTSIDE the classroom. The main thing I've learned is that we REALLY need to teach students computer skills to students. We spent alot of time with students in the first week just teaching some basic computer skills, like saving, opening, copying, pasting, and basic internet and searching skills. With a project like this, it seems to expose even more how much we need to be INTEGRATING the technology into all parts of a students learning and into our curriculum.
A cool site that was discovered out of this was something for the Biology students:
http://www.biologycorner.com/ It goes right along with the book and it has many great activities both online and offline for students. Check it out!
Also, our teachers are using Moodle, and hippocampus not to mention the blogs and wiki's they have created.
I'm brewing up another post about all the other new technologies we have implemented into the classrooms across the district!.