Learning to Blog

More learning...always learning!!! I am taking an online class from LaVerne University on Web 2.0 tools. today and am working on one of the assingments. I have a book to read about Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts. I love these tools so reading about them is easy, although time consuming. It has made such an impact on the way I teach and my students are more engaged. There are so many different tools that add to a more engaging lesson in using technology. Today Iam reading about weblogs...great ideas for me to use in my classroom. Seniors...stay tuned for a lesson on blogging....you are going to blog about your last days at McCaskey!

I just read some really good ideas about blogging and using Blogger in the classroom. See my wiki page on Web 2.0 tools for my notes on blogging. A great tip is to remove the "Next Blog" on your page so students don't get into random blogs. Click the Template tab, click the edit HTML sub tab, scroll down to the word"body" abd paste some HTML code. Wow...what a great piece of advice!!

Learning about the iPad

Great workshop today at Hershey Lodge. Learned and used an iPad and got a great wiki with much info about the ipad. Lots of talk about how to use the iPad in a classroom setting and some good apps. I learned what the ePub format does and found that Adobe InDesign allows you to save as an ePub file so you can take teacher materiels and create ebooks. This is great because this can then be read on the iPad, with video, hyperlinks, and audio embedded. This works just like the Nook or Kindle. The ebook is a free app on the iPad and some of the books are free. I'm not ready to buy the iPad until it has a port for the flashdrive. This was a very worthwhile day!!! So glad to be at the Pete and C again.

Heading to PETE and C

I am heading to the Pete and C Conference tomorrow....yeah!!! I have attended this conference for the past 20 years and remember when it was held at Valley Forge Convention Center. I love it at Hershey Lodge...the lodge is beautiful and has plenty of rooms for all of the workshops...the free chocholate that is handed out is not a bad perk either...yum!!!
Follow my blog to hear about the latest technology for teachers.

Meet my Homeroom

It is so exciting to be back at McCaskey East. Today my 9th graders waited outside of my room while I greeted each one with a handshake and escorted them to their seats. That was a great experience since I could meet each one individually, even if it was for only 30 seconds. Since I will be having these students for the next four years as their homeroom teacher, I wanted them to feel comfortable in my room. Most of them had their MIT uniform on....a good beginning.
Now tomorrow I meet my classes...yeah!!!

Another class at Millersville

This is a great class because I am using Publisher to create materials for my classroom. Students really struggle with the process of the computer fair and all the parts that go into it so I decided to create a booklet for them to use. Hopefully I will have 30 copies of laminated booklets by the end of this week. Back to work!!!

Love that Classroom 2.0

It's amazing how much cool stuff in inside the Classroom 2.0 newsletter. I have been exloring the letter, looking at possible free workshops, webinars, and reading commentary about wikis and blogs. I have learned some cool tricks to share with my students and have been bookmarking sites to share with my peers.

I found a good site that allows me to compare wikis. I found it while reading comments under the wikis section in Classroom 2.0. The site is WikiMatrix. You can choose different wikis and it gives you a very detailed comparison list. This is perfect for my fight to use wikispaces!

Looking at more Web 2.0 Tools

Back to my blog after taking 2 days to transfer all of my daughter's prized possessions from one apartment to another at JMU...hot and humid, but the job is done. Today I want to explore some tools that I haven't tried yet.

Wow, the Web 20 wiki is going to be a great tool for teaching about wikis and using Glogster. There are great examples of wikis, a video for introducing them and steps to create a wiki using wikispaces. I will have my students use this site when working with another teacher.