Ok, I just completed my Learning/Technology Fair Project.  I chose to begin a classroom blog as another way to share information about what we are doing in first grade with the rest of the world.  I decided to record my students reading their constellation stories with my Flip video recorder.  It is very easy to use.  I then uploaded the videos with the Flip software.  In order to load the videos to teachertube, I had to first save them to a file on my desktop.  If I uploaded to youtube, I could have done it directly.  So, teachertube had one extra step which was fine once I figured it out.  Then I loaded the videos from teachertube to my blog by the html.  It was a little time consuming, but now that I know how to do it it should be much faster next time.  It was definitely a great learning experience and feel that I am just touching the surface of how a blog can become an integral part of classroom communication and learning tool.  If you would like to see my blog it is wcmlyons.edublogs.org

Is it just me, or does it look like the dates we are publishing our comments is off.  I just posted one today (March 10, 2009), and it looks like I posted it in October.

I have been struggling with how to use an activity I have been doing with my students.  As a reading teacher, I would never want to showcase my students as children who struggle with reading, and suddenly realized that that was what I was accomplishing with my original idea.  It occurred to me a few days ago, however, that perhaps I can showcase the activity and get my students’ thoughts on it — Using VoiceThread.  I hope it works.

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6640443.html

Someone in my PLN posted this link to an interesting article.  It got me thinking about our buget concerns and how we can use free resources on the web to supplement what we are able to buy.  I know that Jamie has shown us some cool open source tools and we are experimenting with virtualization.  It’s nice to know that we are still on the cutting edge of technology.