Presented Google applications today to my teachers. I don’t know if it was the fact that we were off yesterday for a snow day or that they were bored out of their minds, but all the grades were pretty quiet. For the sake of my ego, I’m going with they were tired ;o)
Here’s a copy of my presentation.
Until next time ~ Danita
I can’t believe I haven’t posted since APRIL! What a slacker ;o) Actually, I have been swamped and every time I planned to blog, something else came up that was always labeled an emergency. So, to bring you up to date in a brief synopsis…..
* School ended well. We will be opening a new middle school in the fall – SanLee Middle School. It’s going to be great! I am VERY excited! Each teacher will receive their own laptop and each classroom will have 5 computers in the room along with a SmartBoard, Elmo document camera, and LCD projector. Plus, the Principal is fabulous!
* We presented at the Upstate Technology Conference in Greenville, South Carolina. Wonderful group of teachers! I really would like to attend again next year. We presented 4 sessions and every one of them were full – even the 8:00 AM session! Talk about impressed!
* Today I am in a McRel training. Very good for beginners, but nothing new – yet – for us. Matt is good and the information is FABULOUS. This would be a wonderful workshop for teachers and there are several here with us.
* Went home to see my family for a few days. Hubby and I also went to Carolina Beach over 4th of July weekend. We had a wonderful time! It was good to get away for a few days.
* Hubby found a job – YIPPEE!! Only bad part is the shift. But, hopefully, it will change soon.
Well, that’s an update in a nutshell. I was hoping to have the time to go into a lot more detail, but maybe soon.
Until next time ~ Danita
WOW! Remind me never to apply for 3 session at a conference again! I thought I would apply for 3 sessions in hopes that NCAECT would accept one. Surprise! The good thing was that we presented back to back to back in the same room and all on the first day.
Our best session was our first one, Digital Photos, now what?. We had people sitting on the floor. Kim and I were expecting maybe 20 tops. You can only imagine our surprise when people kept coming in. It was great! Of course, we had a few stumbles, but since it was our first time presenting on digital photos, it went very well. Our Animoto didn’t load in time, but Kim was a huge hit with Gogofrog. If you haven’t tried Gogofrog, you have to – it’s great!
We then presented Wiki This Way. We have done this particular session before, so it went off fairly well. I hope everyone learned something. We had some great comments from the teachers. Again, we had a huge turnout, but not standing room only.
Finally, we ended with Creating Magic with Web 2.0 Tools. Again, this was a rerun for us, but it still went well. Not as many people this time since it was also during Tammy Worcester’s session. She is so good, that I really didn’t blame people for attending her session. In fact, I suggested that a couple of teachers go there and view our wiki later. But, we did have a good turnout. I think that we need to refocus if we use this session again. Web 2.0 tools is just too wide open. Skypeing with a NASA trainer was the highlight. The teachers loved that!
Even though we didn’t get to attend many sessions on the last day, there were a couple of teachers presenting their lessons on SmartBoards in the hallway that I thought was one of the most beneficial I have ever attended. Susie and her partner, whom I’m sorry I have forgotten her name, had some great ideas! I’m so glad that she made a wiki. I volunteered to make one for her is she would send me her lessons. They are great – check them out!
The NCAECT conference was really good this year. Scott Smith and Marlo Gaddis did a wonderful job. It was one of the best conferences I have attended in recent years.
Until next time ~ Danita
Yep, that was me skipping down the hallway on Friday. I had spent a couple of days in Susan Oriet’s 6th grade Language Arts class working on Voicethread. The kids made collages of books they had read and then we recorded their reports onto Voicethread. WOW! What a great experience! I had so much fun! This was one of my first experiences presenting student’s work online. I think it’s addicting!
If you get a free minute, cruise on over and take a look & listen to the projects. We’d LOVE for you to add your comments, too.
Mrs. Oriet’s class’ voicethread project
Until next time ~ Danita
Don’t forget the K12 Online Conference begins today! Click on over and learn something 
Until next time ~ Danita
What a wonderful week I had! It began Monday with my friend Kim and I presenting at the North Carolina Elementary Education Conference. We did our Web Wizards Web 2.0 presentation. How fun it is to have someone you can work with so well. She’s great and really does know her stuff. The best part was when we were asked at the end of the session to present wikis to 15 LEA’s in Western Carolina. How cool!
Thursday, I had an advanced wikis workshop for my teachers. We had about 8 teachers there, but the sharing and learning we did was phenomenal! I need to have a sharing session soon. While we were talking about wikis, we got off on tangents (reminds me of my teaching days) of other web 2.0 applications – Skype was popular. Now that the fire is spreading, people are spending more and more of their time discovering new applications. I would love to be able to sit back, listen, and facilitate a great web 2.0 discussion. It’s coming! How exciting!
Today was the awesome closure to a great week. We took my 12 year old St. Bernard, Katie, to the Lee County Fair for the 4-H dog show. Nothing fancy, but it sure is fun. Katie loves it! She gets all the attention she can stand and has everyone eating out of her hand, uh, paw. She won several blue ribbons and a couple of 2nd places. She didn’t win Best in Show like she did in 2005, but she had a great time. Now, she will sleep for days to recover 
)
Until next time ~ Danita
Many of you probably do not know that I publish a monthly newsletter for my teachers. You can view my previous months newsletters on this page of my blog.
I have struggled with publisher (urggg) and yes, publisher won. This time I went out on a limb and tried PowerPoint. Much, much easier! Only problem, I couldn’t get Edublogs to accept the upload. So, I turned to Slideshare. Great program.
Let me know what you think of the new format. I didn’t have any of my teachers fuss, so maybe they open and read it okay. That is if they read it ).
Here’s the link to the slideshare site.
Until next time ~ Danita
Excellent. I love it when teachers are so hungry for ideas that they are almost foaming at the mouth. Kim and I did a presentation this afternoon on PowerPoint and how you can use it for more than presentations. Great ideas spawned from the discussions amongst the teachers.
We did presentations on how to create:
Personalized Sticky Notes
Accordion Books
Mystery Pictures
Mini Books
Brochures
Study Notes Bookmarks
Information Bookmarks
Acrostics
The teachers ate it up. They loved it. I know I learned quite a bit before we began planning for the workshop and even more during the discussions. I had previously only used PowerPoint as a presentation tool but, there are so many more uses!
I finally uploaded my first video to TeacherTube. I was expecting a lot of trouble, but it was soooo easy! Check out Gregg Halkuff’s multiple presentations on Japan. He did a great job, but the cameraman (me) doesn’t have too steady of a hand. Well, Ron Howard had to start somewhere, too, right?
The only regret I have in my new position is that I don’t have a group of kids to call my own. Oh, how I would change the way I taught if I had known then what I know now. Discovering web 2.0 has opened my eyes in such a way, I would feel like a new teacher going into the classroom.
Maybe, someday I’ll go back. Maybe …..
Until next time ~ Danita
I couldn’t find any pictures of a dog foaming at the mouth, so you get this one from
Now, that’s a DOG!
Yahoo2! How often do we get to post the good great stuff? Well, I have 2 great items to post tonight.
The first great item was that my presentation went well Thursday night. We had probably 100-150 people in attendance and I had a really good turnout at my sessions. That may not seem like much to you, but we normally have about a fifth of that amount at our PTSO meetings. Hopefully, next year will draw even more parents. I have volunteered to do another Internet safety session later in the year. I will have about an hour for that presentation. Much, much better than my 10 minutes. I don’t know about you, but I can talk – and 10 minutes was just enough to get me started.
The second great item, and I did have a conundrum of which of these to post first, was about the teacher wikis. Remember the teacher that couldn’t understand the difference between wikis and blogs? Well, he called me this afternoon asking me to help him add pages to his navigation page. He went on to say that he LOVES the wiki and is excited about adding to it. Let me repeat that, he said he loves the wiki and is excited about adding to it. WOW! To say I was surprised is the understatement of the century. Check out his wiki. It’s really pretty good for a first try.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bask in my happiness for awhile )
Until next time ~ Danita
Flickr Smiling Dog
Tonight I am presenting a short session on Internet safety to the parents at one of my middle schools. Nervous? You better believe it. The counselors are projecting 300 people in attendance.
It really is a neat idea. The counselors have planned a PASS (parents and students succeeding) Fair. The parents are invited for a free dinner (I’m guessing pizza) sponsored by Capitol Bank and free child care. There are going to be sessions on test taking tips, nutrition for teens, adolescent behavior, school dropout prevention, Lee County parks and recreation, Girl Scouts, Stevens Foundation, Communities In School, Gangs & drugs, Reading strategies and me with Internet safety. Sounds great.
Hubby has volunteered to help with the babysitting. I requested he have the older kids since I don’t want him to get any ideas when he’s around the babies. At least when he’s around young children (and my middle schoolers) the idea of not having children sounds good to him. So, I like for him to get that wonderful experience as often as he can.
Wish me luck and if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
Until next time ~
Danita
Flickr
