Yeah- I did it!

Tonight I came home after class (Integrating Technology into the Classroom)  and successfully exported my 7 year-old personal blog to this site and published only the tech posts I wanted here.  It took me only 5 minutes to move over that many years of work.  I cannot believe it. My normal blog has EVERYTHING on it, book and theatre reviews, recipes and family events, the DDR (Ask me what that is) as well as all my tech stuff. Since I would like to keep my techie and school stuff separate from my personal blog, I am so pleased I was able to do this. HOW did I do it you might ask? I googled it, just like we shared with everyone tonight in class. No one knows how to do anything until we google it, or YouTube it, but we have to look to find the answer. LOOKING IS KEY!   Now I am off my soapbox and onto enjoying my new techie blog space.

 I am so excited to fit in another course before the year is out, and this    one looks to be another zinger- we will be using more tools I haven't yet tried and I am sure that will only increase my effectiveness as a Technology Integrationist.  For my wild card options I will pick  tools I haven't used before, so I can gain as much new knowledge as I can.  Since I have used many of the mentioned tools with my students already I have to be careful to challenge myself.  I am also excited to help out the other students in our class, I am sure the three of us who have had Amy before will be able to be of some use to the rest of the class, and they in their turn will help the next class they are in.  It is a beautiful system.

Here is the voki I created tonight to introduce myself, some of them my  classmates made were quite funny.  My students loved it when I used voki for instruction and we had a lot of fun in our last class using avatars to introduce our Instructional Theorists. we did have some trouble with voki freezing up on a few computers.  This frustrated a few of us and when I got home and logged into my account, the voki I made in class was gone.  I had to create another one.    The application also froze up a few times at home.  We are lucky we have other avatar web 2.0 applications to choose from in case this happens.   Amy said she would post them all in blackboard for us and I did view at least three of them in my last class.

Parent Night for Talent 21 Grant

It was a rewarding evening for the parents of the Talent 21 students in Woodbine, NJ.  They were able to use their child's new laptop and learn about the acceptable use policy, insurance options and the rationale for  the laptop rollout. Parent asked questions abou the use of laptops in their homes and in school.

 These students are the lucky few, they will have one-to- one computing for three years, across all subject areas.  One of the challenges they face is the learning curve to use the technology in a constructive way to learn content and share what they have learned with others.  Every day new challenges arise, new technologies are available, and they will keep pace with theses lightning changes.  This ability to adapt will serve them well in the future as they compete for jobs in a technology rich society.