Area 3 Writing Project Blog

Good morning and welcome to Going Live with Blogging. Your first step in entering the blogosphere is to take a moment and think about how blogs and blogging might help teachers.  How about students?

What challenges, possibilities, and opportunities do you face when, like this group in the photo below who  also crossed centuries, you leave our week-long institute and return to your own classrooms?

Podcasting is another one of those “tools for everyone,” given that all you need is access to the Internet, a microphone, and a free audio editing program such as Audacity. But like any genre, to learn it, we need good models and ideas for incorporating the tool into the classroom, such as I’ve listed below:

• Colonial Williamsburg – Past and Present Podcasts – Professional actors and historians
  
• Sugihara Letters – 6th graders in Jim Faires’s class
• YA! Reads – Rob Rozema’s pre-service teachers

Here’s a peek at what podcasting looks like in the classroom:

What are your ideas on how podcasting can help teachers and students?

It was exciting yesterday to watch 17 Summer Tech Institute teachers delve into the blogosphere! Please take a moment to share some of your thoughts on how blogs and blogging will expand your teaching toolkit.

Welcome to the 2008 A3WP Summer Tech Institute!  We’re looking forward to sharing this week-long journey with you.  Please take a moment to think about what you bring with you into the Institute and what you hope to leave with.

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Welcome to our podcasting workshop! As we explore resources, ideas, and uses for podcasting, please jot down (via comments to this post) your thoughts, questions, and suggestions for adding this Web 2.0 tool into your teaching practice.

Let’s start with some of the tools you will need:

• Sound editing software: Audacity, a free download. Here is a link to downloading instructions for both Audacity and the Lame encoder file.
• A microphone: Purchasing a microphone will be your only expense. There’s a good chance the built in mic on your computer will not be adequate for a quality production, but check it out before purchasing mics. You can go high-end with a Snowball microphone or take a trip to Radio Shack, Best Buy, etc. , and find one for under $10.
• Someplace (server space) to host your podcast: For today’s workshop, we’ll be demonstrating how to upload your podcasts to Edublogs.org, the wonderful, wonderful, free blogging program for educators. During our summer workshop, we’ll introduce you to the California K12 High Speed Network’s edZone, with its unlimited storage space for teachers, as well as Gcast, which enables you to podcast from your cell phone.
• Copyright-free music: If you would like to add music for your intro/outro, sites such as Freeplaymusic.com and Jamendo offer free downloads. Be sure to check out Terms of Agreement for any copyright-free/royalty free sites.

Here are some additional resources from CLRN’s Brian Bridges:

• Adjusting Sound Settings
• Podcasting Resources and Websites

If you have podcasting resources you recommend I add to the sidebar under Podcasting, please let me know.

Thank you for joining us today!

*Note: Podcast image copied from http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com

Welcome to our Going Live with Edublogs workshop! We’ll be looking forward to adding a whole new set of edublogs to our blogroll – and following the ways in which our workshop participants weave blogging into their professional toolkit.

You will find a growing bank of Edublogs.org resources and tutorials on our Bringing Educators to Edublogs site. Please contact us if you have questions about blogging in general, or Edublogs in particular, or if you have resources we should add.

Thanks for joining us today!

Bee Foster led the kick-off workshop for the 2007-08 Super Saturday Technology Workshops. Eighteen teachers gathered for the October 27 event, held at in the Computer Lab at the Academic Surge. Following a lively rant about technology access and issues at school sites, the teachers delved into some of the organization tools available in MS Word, such as creating an interactive seating chart.

Resources from the workshop are posted at http://a3wp-tech.blogspot.com/.

Session Two will take place on December 15, 9:00-12:00, at the Academic Surge. The topic will be Using Free Google Suite.

The five days have flown by…and what an amazing week it has been. Please jump in and share your thoughts on Telling Stories in a Digital Age.

I’m sitting in an A3WP tech workshop brainstorming with our summer institute teachers about what makes a PowerPoint presentation ineffective, boring, confusing and/or painful to sit through.

Here are some of our thoughts:

• Too much writing on a slide
• Horrid color combinations
• Background sounds
• Spelling and grammar errors
• Too many objects or words flying in

Don McMillan’s MySpace video does a great job of summing up bad PowerPoints –

Check out some excellent PowerPoint DOs and DON’Ts resources posted by Prairie Lands Writing Project’s Mark Henderson.  Check back soon for a link to Bee Foster’s handout of PowerPoint do’s and dont’s.