Where does the time go?

While I have been working on the lesson plan assignment for the class I have been thinking about all that I have learned and not only have I had the benefit from taking this class, but how useful and fun it has been for my class to get to try different things. I will say that my student teacher is great with technology ideas and usage so he has provided many opportunities for the class as well as myself and we all appreciate that too.
The most amazing part to me is with one piece of equipment and about 45 minutes a story can be developed. I look back to the book each group created about ISU and the creativeness that went on in a very small amount of time. Then I start to compare it to projects students get to do at school and how well the time would be used if we were able to put in the technology piece more often and not back away because of being so unsure. I let my class make an advertisement/example of PBIS for the school and they only had about 20 minutes to do so because something happened and the adults could not finish the video. My class in 20 minutes made the adult part that we spent a day on look so amateur. It was amazing for me to see how natural this kind of stuff comes to children and how skiddish the adults are.
As I have stated before I know that my class will have use to at least one Flip Video Camera after the holidays and hopefully two. I am so excited to allow them to create and share at least every other week!
I just know that I will be the one who continues to grow and learn from their experiences and us being able to share them.
The best part is not only am I asking for the Flip Video, but I think that an I-Pad is in my future too!
It really is just like Christmas.

I FORGOT! November 22nd for the week of November 15th.

I was so caught up in the excitement of getting the Digital Story finished that I totally forgot with NO class last week to BLOG! Sorry.
I will have to say that my computer usage became limited when my laptop was in for repairs and now seems it can't be repaired. So that was the start to my break. Then last week we had to take our PC to the place to have it fixed, so Thank God for my job and now I am back from break and I will BLOG for the upcoming week too.
My class is so excited because they know I have been taking the class at ISU and that is working with technology ideas so they are constantly  searching for ideas we can try now. Last week they performed a readers theater for Thanksgiving and then they were deciding what else they could do and all on their own they came around basically to the idea of a digital story. Our goal is that we will do this for the Winter Season.
My hope is that at the Holiday time I will get a Flip Video Camera. We'll see.
I hop you had a Great Holiday!

Amazing When Something is Not Second Nature

Wow, this week I have been on technology overload. I had my story all recorded and now I have been editing and doing the final touches. This just helps me realize how not technology minded I am. Sometimes I have the challenge being that I serve on ten committees and am gone at least once every three weeks to training or a meeting, trying to keep caught up in my classroom and make sure I am where I should be for this class in Ames. I think I have worked through my digital story and learned by writing a description for how I would use a digital project in my classroom. I can't wait to do the project with my class next year! Out of this whole class I have decided I think I'm going to have to invest in a Flip Video Camera and I keep telling my family that an I-Pad would be great for Christmas. I can tell you right now my husband is thrilled I took this class because at least now I will go to Best Buy and the Apple Store with him. I am doing a pilot on a new reading series and the technology piece is unbelievable. With our great projector systems in our classroom it will make our reading time Heavenly and fitting for all students! Then of course I challenged myself to go above and beyond what is given to us technolgy wise and think from what I have learned from this class and how I could use them with the new reading/language arts series.

November 9th, What do I BLOG about?

I was really having a hard time coming up with something to write about this week. Then I realized how truly reliable our society is on technology. We have friends that come to our house every Sunday after our evening church services. We always kind of assume that their coming. It was a couple of Sundays ago and we assumed they were coming. I spent Sunday afternoon preparing for them and then when they got to church Sunday night they asked me if I had gotten their e-mail the day before that they weren't able to make it. I reminded them that I did not check my e-mail daily on the weekend. I thought for a minute you could have picked up a phone and called. WoW, it dawned on me what a technology reliable society we are!
I left last Wednesday night appreciating the work we had gotten to do on making a video of a book for a book review. It is amazing to me how differently creative we all can be when given thirty minutes, flip video camera, and the Iowa State Campus to use to review a book. It made me stop and think about how I could really use this in my classroom. I have what I call Coffee Talk on Fridays in my classroom and I decided that at least once a month we would use the video and watch recordings on one Friday out of the month and learn about new books.

New Ideas All Around! November 1st, 2010

I had a training session to go to last Friday and all I could think of was I had conferences this week and when was I going to get everything done. It was 2:00 pm and they were bringing out a new speaker. My attitude was less than perfect, but he was introduced and started speaking about comprehension and how/what could help.
He let us know he was going to walk us through a vocabulary lesson. It was on the computer as a power point and it was excellent! At 2:15 I was wide awake and ready to listen to every word he was speaking.
He put the word up, then had the definition, then the suffix, and held much discussion about each piece. I do have to say the best was when he used two different pictures fitting to the words and it gave a view to what he was talking about. His presentation addressed the multiple intelligence theory well.
There were many lessons I left with. One being that at 2:00 pm on Friday I should be ready to give that person a chance to present. You never know what more you could learn. Plus, I do always try to keep in mind of what I would feel like if I was the one having to present at 2:00 pm on a Friday afternoon. I'm not sure there could be a whole lot worse when your audience is adults. On the way out we did think about what children must feel like on Fridays at 2:00 also.
Technology is all around us and I notice it more now then ever.