professional development with Julie Lindsey

[Vivien Sewell]

During Wednesday's PD with Julie we were challenged by her as grade level teachers to reflect on what we need in terms of making e-learning effective in our classrooms. What did we need, what haven't we got, how are we managing with the integration of the new tools into our classrooms,and do our students blog? I laughed out loud - our students blog? Well okay, we as teachers input their "blog" for them. But there may well be some schools who do have Kindergarteners who blog, and it would be worth having some links to them, as a model for ourselves and our students. A bit like the "pen pals" of the good old days.
When I read - correction, when I skim all the notes and links Julie has put up on the e-learning wikispace, I find myself making an awfully long list of techie skills I would love to develop but cant seem to make time for. How does Julie get through all that?
Here's what I have so far on my "Techie Wish List"
Videoing the kids - then how to effortlessly upload the video, edit, add music and put it on our class wikispace.
Music - getting music
Blogging - using the wikispace to blog, write up the student responses, thoughts
E-readers - get my hands on an ereader even a Kindle -and see how it works - wouldn't that be fantastic to have these in the classroom with e-books read for the kids to "read" or lap read with their buddies?
We have a class camera - but the kids aren't using it yet - would be interesting to see what they would like to take pictures of, and would it generate more animated conversations which we could capture on voicethread?

[Rebecca Hatherley]

Hello Vivien,
My youngest daughter just started her first blog, and she's 5 years old. She loves it. She is really into making Voki speaking avatars. It's easier for her, as her typing is incredibly slow, as you can imagine. She creates her avatar, then uses the microphone to record her message. Also. I just purchased two Flip Mino camcorders and she loves it. She can make movies on her own, the flip mino is dead easy. She can almost upload her video to YouTube by herself, little more practice. Then uses vodpod", to add her YouTube video to her blog. (Vodpod is a Firefox extension, so she just clicks one button - easy.) She's having so much fun. Now, I have to find some people to comment on her blog.

Good luck. I hope some of the tools I mentioned above will help make blogging easier.

Rebecca