School has been in session for about a month.  We held 2 Web 2.0 in service for our staff.  We got all of our teachers gmail accounts so they can access our Technology Wiki at Google Sites and our Technology Blog at Blogger.  Starting in September we will be holding monthly, short 20 minutes lessons to introduce different web 2.0 applications.  If there is a greater demand of a class, we will develop a more in-depth class.  Certain grade levels will be starting their blogs shortly using Edublogs.  Finally our GT class is using PBWiki for their work and assignments.  This year our school has dived into the 21st century.

I will be using a PBWiki to communicate with my parents and to present my students’ work and projects.  I have also started an Edublog but I don’t know how I will be using it at this time.

PBWiki is offering a free upgrade with a Back to School Challenge.

Teaching Tips.com is offering its listing of 50 useful blogging tools for teachers.  This list provides blogging hosts, blogging tools, internet safety, and helpful blogging hints.

I think this is pretty neat.  As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to keep organized notes.  I am always writing notes on index cards on sheets that I have under a clip board.  I don’t know maybe I will try this and see how it works.  School starts next week.  Try PocketMod.

In my need to find websites that will help me develop an effective classroom blog, I came across supportblogging.com.  This site is a wiki that provides a venue for everyone to promote the virtues of educational blogging.  There is a list of bloggers from all over the world and a link to their websites.  I have a feeling that this will be a great help as I develop my blog.

I thought I could easily start Jing up and test it out. Wrong. I pressed the record button then the buttons vanished. I couldn’t figure how to stop it. Youtube to the Rescue.

I have found that youtube is an excellent resource for “how to” type videos.  Before I bought my Slingbox 8 months ago, I went to youtube and watched someone install theirs.  I wanted to know how difficult it was before I bought it. Needless to say, I am a happy owner of a Slingbox Pro.

How do you make your blog visually appealing?  I have never had the “eye” for visual type things.  I like things in compartments (neat and orderly).  But that’s not what makes a blog  a “must read”.  I fear that I will need to start using my creativity.   Ask me to organize something – no problem.  Ask me to use my imagination and creativity to design a “wow” blog site – big problem.  My elementary school teacher could probably tell you my clay pieces were simplistic to say the least.  I had all of those ash trays to prove it and moreover no one in my family smoked.

I spent the better part of this weekend playing with pbwiki. It is proving to be a very daunting task to create my first wiki.

Some of the many questions that have come up:

• How much security is too much?
• Would my students’ parents understand this?
• What would be good internet policies to include?
• Does this make good organization sense for a wiki?
• Can they navigate around the wiki with ease?
• What will my students learn if I made my pages this way?
• What about pictures and videos?
• Should that go in a separate folder?

What has been helpful is doing this in chunks. It allows me to return and see my wiki from a different perspective. My biggest question when school starts will be 1. How many of my students have a computer at home? 2. Are they allowed to use it? I could be doing all of this for nothing!

But until then, BRING THEM ON.

I signed up for the pbwiki summer camp.  I am really excited about this because I think this will be a great way not only to learn this but I can actually see how others develop their wiki.  They said that there were a thousand participants in this summer camp.  WOW.  There are assignments every week and some webinars that need to be watched.  This camp is geared to the mainland summer time table.  Pbwiki is saying that this course will be completed by September 1st so it’ll be ready for school.  That’s funny–I guess my wiki will be ready for the 2nd quarter.