And we have computers!

Woo Hoo!  We have laptops in the classroom!  I received my new school laptop about two weeks ago and late last week my eight classroom laptops were delivered.  I believe I have migrated all of my documents from my old Dell laptop to my new Mac.  This will make my classroom a complete Mac room (once the old Dell's get relocated).  There are still questions to be answered in regard to charging and storage, but the computers are in the kids hands!  Of course, the first thing we did was to complete our podcast recordings... and I found out our school does have a permission to publish form so I'm close to uploading some of the podcasts here (if I can).  If I can't accomplish that here they will be loaded to my wiki.

My next personal hurdle is getting the students to start using some of the more creative websites such as xtranormal or animoto.  I have to start formulating my first quarter book projects, so I'm envisioning some videos coming along soon.  Along with continued podcasts of course.  I was thinking today of creating a literature podcast series where they students are responsible for creating buzz about the stories we read via podcasts.

As for the wiki, I believe the next page I will create will be for organizing an essay.  My advanced class is already in the midst of writing a full essay and the other students need to be headed there soon if I'm going to do my CNN Heroes unit again this year.

Plagiarism Podcasts - let the challenge begin!

We are starting to record our plagiarism podcasts this week.  Oh boy.  This would be fabulous, but technology is always filled with glitches and this is no exception.  The first day was pretty tough because our computers kept crashing on us.  The few that did get recorded on my teacher station I didn't save correctly.  Duh, you need to "share" it to really send it out (I remembered that today).  Today the computers were very much our friend.  I have one finished "shared" podcast and a few more putting finishing touches on tomorrow.  This is our first attempt at podcasting so it is still a little rough, but overall I am super proud of my students.  Hopefully I'll be able to put some of the more creative ones on here to give you a listen.