Graduation is over

Yesterday was our GMU graduation, and after the Pomp and Circumstance, the wonderful adress, the degrees and awards and then POOF! it's all done. What next? Can I really be done with all of the lesson plans, portfolio, Thursday night classes? What will I do now? Going back to cleaning the house and ironing is not rewarding, Thursday night tv doesn't interest me at all, and my reading is now very educational in nature. Maybe I can continue the Ender's Game series, or look for more books by authors we read in class. I'll miss you all and good luck in your part of the world of education!

Podcasting

I've been using both garage band and audacity and I'm really enjoying them both. I like the editing capabilities of audacity, placing the clips of music exactly where you want them to begin. I'm finding this fits well with my own class work, now to adapt it to the classroom! Podcast lesson plan next!

Flip vidoes with Kindergarten

Well I have completed my unit on weather with our Kindergarten class and they really got into the Flip video's. They also loved making a Thunder cake, it was just like a cooking show with a completely baked cake ready just as we placed our cake in the oven. So we had two cakes in two days, they really Loved that!
As for the videos well we most assuredly have some children that need to be on the stage! Actors abound at Appletree. No reservations here. Overall the unit was a great success and weather is now our favorite topic. I'm not sure we'll ever get beyond it this year every week they have more to say about what has been predicted and what the weather will be in the future.
Here's a Kindergarten excerpt:


second boy:



last child:

More on Podcasting

I was very hesitant in working with Audacity, whereas using Garage Band that comes on the Mac was a breeze. I think I just need to get used to all the differences between the two and settle on one (Garage Band) to learn for my students then practice with Audacity to show them later. The podcast we completed in class was not as easy as it sounds but I was impressed with how some of my classmates interpreted the directions. Truly, I need to lighten up a bit and not take everything so seriously, I'd have a lot more fun anyway!

Podcasting

I love the title, PODcasting right off of Apple's ipod! Well after reading All about podcasting I'm ready to try it out. After all I have beautiful new mac's all equipped to go for it immediately. Now I just have to come up with content, I was thinking of our Wed letter published every wed to parent's e-mail. Maybe we could have the oldest students and our teachers read a section into a podcast and have the parent's subscribe. We have a large amount of space on our server for serving up this kind of content. Once I work out all the security issues like who can access and from where we should be set to go.
After listening to Radio WillowWeb, I think it is a possibility. Also from my itunes account I already subscribed to podcasts of my favorite NPR shows that I tend to miss when initially broadcast but I added even more from the education part of itunes. There is so much out there, and so little time!

Digital video

I haven't had a chance to play with editing the video once created and moved to the computer. But I have worked with editing in the camera and it's really easy. I am attempting weather reports using the camera with Kindergarteners next week. I can't wait to see how they do, and if they can even hold the camera straight. This should be exciting......or crazy, stay tuned.

Lesson plan based on blogging

This is a link I found from Diigo about creating lesson plans based on blogging and how to best use it in a classroom. This talks mainly about grade 3 and up with blogs but it is an interesting resource. http://langwitches.org/blog/2008/12/23/blogging-with-elementary-school-students/
Let me know what you think.........

Diigo is a big hit again!

Well this week I had so many interesting leads from Diigo that I spent all evening reading lesson ideas and wikki ideas that I never did get to my "homework" ! I found this great site to download Lego building blocks for use on the Mac or PC, http://ldd.lego.com/download/default.aspx Other sites about wikki's in the classroom and a new site called VoiceThread, http://voicethread.com/ which is great for using with young children. They showed an example of a discussion about a picture with all the members of a family that were in the picture even though they are all grown now.
And even a world meal site that encourages making a typical meal that the average person on the planet eats, http://wilderdom.com/games/descriptions/WorldMeal.html the site encourages us to make a meal like this for a group and hopefully they will each make it for a group and a snowball effect will occur. Interesting I might try it with one of my classes?

Copyright permission

I saw a comic in the Wash Post that would be great in my portfolio. So I e-mailed Creators Syndicate for permission to use it, and they granted it. I'm so excited! I never thought it would be this easy or I'd get the permission so fast. Wow, now I'll share this with my students and we can talk about honesty which is our value for February, and how this is the honest way to borrow a copyrighted item and give credit to the original artist.

Diigo news

Now that I'm signed up with Diigo I had my first week's worth of ideas. One I really like: http://www.mrallsophistory.com/fire.html, a lesson plan to use with older students but I can see a possible way to include younger students too.
I also found this site http://www.whitehousehistory.org/ click on the "American President" on the left side. They have a great song recorded there with pictures too for help with remembering our 44 presidents. I'd like my third graders to hear this song and come up with other pictures for each president. Maybe we could add this song to our "United States" song for remembering the 50 states.
There is just so much out there I could spend all day online.

Twitter experience

So yesterday I signed up for a free twitter account. I had played with this briefly early last year but decided I'd try it again. So far I'm following Marc Warner our senator and some actor from CA is now following me. This is strange and I'm not sure I like it. I don't know him and I'm not sure why he would choose to follow me.
I have also signed up for Diigo, it's cool to have this as part of my Firefox bookmark bar, so if I go to an article I wish to bookmark and is relevant to education I can also click the Diigo symbol and it will be saved there as well. I'm interested if anyone else has tried twitter or Diigo?

Wiki's

After reading the three chapters in Richardson I have learned so much!! I've created my own wiki and I'm trying out Diigo, sounds very cool. I'm not sure yet how I can use this in my classroom but I'm sure as I read how other teachers are finding ways to incorporate wiki's and blogs I will find ways to also use these great tools.

Facebook & teachers

We spoke about this in class last week and it came up today at work, Facebook, teachers & parents. What does a teacher do when invited to befriend a parent? Those that have accepted are really caught, what happens when they blog about not really being sick the day they call in sick?
If you ignore a request by a parent will that parent feel bad? How will that be conveyed to the child at home. Your student who probably knows you didn't befriend their Mom? Or are parents keeping that to themselves? It's very hard to figure this out anyone have some ideas?

I need to present something to our after school staff (college students from GMU) about how they should respond to a parent request to friend them on Facebook or Myspace? My first inclination is to say ignore the request but I'm not sure that is correct. Maybe create other pages just for parents and students to see?

Parents & Computers

I give tours of my school to prospective parents. As such when we get to the room where the computers & art supplies are located they are always very impressed. The room is bright and cheerful, the imacs look great, the idea of collaboration is very evident since art is taught in the same space, and many times our four year old class is on-line visiting sites such as Disney Playhouse. Many parents ask me for recommendations of websites for their own toddlers. I am happy to say that our parents are pleased that the students are on-line and have fast internet connections allowing them to connect with the world. I can't imagine school without this capacity!

Education Blogs

Tonight I checked out all of the blog sites at the end of Richardson's chapter 3. What an education I just received. I've learned so much in just one evening. Teachers from Thailand happy to be Americans again, (thanks Mr. President!). Discussions of Change, and how it is needed and how we as teachers need to embrace it in our classrooms. This has been a terrific evening, can't wait for class tomorrow night!

New found items to try

Tonight I found the link to add tunes to my blog. The library of music was quite extensive, even had oldies that I enjoy. Like on an iphone it was an app created for the blog and has an advertisement if a visitor wanted to purchase the music. I want to explore more apps for this site.
I also added a picture for identification.
There is so much to explore but I have so much other work to do in this semester that I can't spend too much time anywhere.

first class in web 2.0

I'm familiar with Facebook, this is my first excursion into the world of blogs. I'm interested in twitter, and podcasts.
I hope to learn a lot more this semester.