Okay, so I wasn't going to do a summer posting, was going to take some time off from this blogging...but there are good things happening out there that I need to write about. So I started writing this on vacation in northern Maine! And look! Blogger now supports images - so here's where I was!First off, check this out: it's the Bristol Elementary Podcast we did the last week of school. I worked with some 3rd & 4th graders (who, by the way, were really good sports, as were their teachers!) who read nonfiction articles about summer safety, then worked up a 1-2 minute "talk" about the content. I recorded this talk, combined all the recordings into one, had our announcer David (what a guy!) do intros to each segment, and let the kids involved choose the accompanying music. It's up on the BES site at http://www.newfound.k12.nh.us/bes/besp_cast06-20.mp3. It can also be downloaded through the iTunes Music Store but I'm still working out the details of how people can subscribe to it to automatically get the new podcasts we'll (ahem) be doing next year.
And what's a podcast, you say? It's the same as a broadcast, only it's online as an audio file. You can listen to a podcast on the web through your computer - or you can download it, much as you'd download music, and listen to it on your mp3 player, or save it to your hard drive for later listening, or play it over and over again on your computer...get the idea?? Now, think about podcasts in the same light as your weekly newsletters or your school webpage. Can you see that podcasting could be another way to practice effective communication skills? could be an exciting new way to give kids an authentic, global audience? another way to get information about the school out to the public? Give this some thought - it's my hope to be podcasting in each building next year. I've been toying with formats - so stay tuned.
Every year, ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education, hosts a big educational technology conference called NECC (National Educational Computing Conference). This year's conference was in Philadelphia and has just recently concluded. NECC has posted webcasts of some of the sessions online at http://www.kidzonline.org/necc/agenda.html. To view them, you need Windows Media Player 7 or higher for Mac or Windows, a free download if you don't already have it on your computer. Registration's free - just name, organization, email, and country. So check out those webcasts to see what's up and coming with educational technology.
Finally, Teacherline, a service of PBS, offers professional development courses online. They have a TON of offerings in Reading/Language Arts, Math, Science, Technology and more! The price is affordable and there are even options for graduate credit. And yes, our computers can handle it! It looks like most of the fall classes run from the end of October until the beginning of December. The course catalog is available at http://teacherline.pbs.org/teacherline - take a look!
More later - in August, probably! There's just so much to share! Hope you're having a wonderful summer!
