Ron Smith, high school teacher and doctoral student
Ron Smith has been a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District for six years, most recently at Hollywood High School, teaching digital graphics and video. He came to teaching by way of photography, after being a commercial photographer and lab operator for 20 years. He holds a B.A. in Art, and an M.A. in Art Education, both from California State University, Northridge. For the last two years, Ron has been working on a doctorate in educational technology at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles.
Subscribe to this blogger's RSS feedThe Rocket Boys: What Students Can Accomplish When You Let Them
By Ron Smith
1/31/07
My class has about fifty computers in it, mostly older Apple G3s, but I am in the process of getting some newer ones. A few of my students decided that they would like to experiment with networked gaming, so they asked me if they could bring in a couple of their own computers and set them up. I said, "Sure."
Less Is More: Sometimes We Can Do Great Things with Fewer Things
By Ron Smith
1/15/07William of Ockham was a fourteenth-century logician and Franciscan friar in England. He came up with the lex parsimoniae, or the law of succinctness, which says entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Occam's razor, as it came to be known, states that when given two equally valid explanations for a phenomenon, one should embrace the less complicated. Or, as architect Mies van der Rohe famously said, "Less is more."
We'd Better Get a Bigger Keyboard!: The Imperative for a Computer for Every Student
By Ron Smith
9/20/06At its inception, computing was about machines, applied science, and nerds. It was a world for nonsocial shut-ins who existed in front of their home-built computers, fiendishly writing code to make the machine do something.
Online All the Time: Using the Web to Stay Organized
By Ron Smith
8/15/06I've been migrating most of my files to the Web. I use my class Web site instead of a file cabinet, and I post family pictures to my personal Web site.
Be Practically Unreasonable: You Never Know Where it May Take You
By Ron Smith
8/7/06I teach art, and I use technology to do it. I want my kids to be able to think creatively about a problem and then choose the most appropriate tech to solve it.
Searching for Steven Spielberg: Well, Not Exactly
By Ron Smith
7/21/06I was telling my brother about some of my digital video students. I told him how they were really creative, and that they were taking to editing like ducks to water.
IM in the Mood for Chat: Let Students Talk and They'll (Eventually) Come Around
By Ron Smith
7/5/06Every 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.
Phone Blogging: The How-To
By Ron Smith
6/30/06I'm about to begin the fall semester at Hollywood High School, in Hollywood, California, on July 5.
The Dropouts: When Kids Are Challenged and Encouraged, Great Things Happen
By Ron Smith
6/28/06At the beginning of this school year, two students were put into my Digital Production class that really didn't belong there.
Digital Natives: Students Can Teach Teachers a Thing or Two
By Ron Smith
6/23/06Marc Prensky has coined the phrase "digital natives."
