I managed to accomplish quite a bit today and I am quite excited to share it all with you. Janis, Jodie and I (all in this course) met for a few hours this afternoon and worked on some of the outcomes/challenges Glen has given us as well as figuring out how to make our lives more technologically smooth. We have set up iGoogle homepages. There are all sorts of widgets that we can add to personalize our homepages and it also indicates when we have something new in our Google mail. I thought it was slick.

Janis also helped me out with delicious. I finally have it figured out and now I need to spend a bit of time looking for appropriate links to add that would be relevant to this course.

I have started a Bloglines account. I plan to move all the students over to it and delete them from my sidebar. I realize there are only a few weeks left in the course but I am hoping we will continue to post pertinent information to our blogs long after to course has finished.

Next I signed up for a Flickr account. I uploaded a picture to see if I could add it under Flickr on my sidebar, but I am not doing something right. I will continue trying to play with that. I have removed Flickr from my sidebar for now because I didn’t want their ramdom pictures to be displayed.

We all took a look at flixn. Flixn is a program where you can record video that can be attached to email, blogs etc. I can see attaching a short video to my class blog informing my students of something. My students can also easily record a short video of themselves.

Last, but not least we tried out Yugma. We were not successful. We were connected to each other but did not have video or audio. I’ll have to attempt that one again.

Oh ya, I also tried out a couple of cars. I really liked the sporty red one vrs the more muted gray/blue one. Heck of a way to pick a vehicle!

I have also been working on my report cards which are due soon.  I am the queen of procrastinating so having things to do for this course is definitely not helping.  Oh, well it will all get done in due time.

I was in on the conference call last weekend.  Once I figured out how to connect (thank you Cheryl) it was easy.  I have since tried out Bridgit to have a video chat.  It is part of our Smartboard software and seems fairly easy to use.  I have a Smartboard mounted on my classroom wall and the students and I love it.  I need to play around with it so I can use it more effectively and more often in my room. 

I also set up a wiki today for my grade 4 class.  It wasn’t too hard to do.  Our division’s goto gal (Janis Williams, who is also part of this class) spent the day showing us some neat applications.  There were two neat things in the pbwiki: one was the chat link that you can add to any page in your wiki, and the other was the “yackpack.”  With the chat function you can chat with everyone else that has the password to your wiki.  The yackpack allows you to communicate with others who have access to your wiki using your mic and earphones.  I think both would be useful in walking a student through a  task on the wiki.

So, after staring into my monitor for what seemed like hours last night, I finally shut things down thinking I was doomed and that I would have to start my blog all over again. Tonight, I logged in, played around for 5 mintues and low and behold problems solved.  Turns out I needed to add more widgets to see my blogroll etc.  I will sleep better tonight!

  I had my first Skype today at lunch.  Very cool!  Now I need to figure out the webcam so I can project video as well as audio.  Looking forward to Saturday’s Skypecast.

So, I added my Skype contact info in the widgets section and all my other info on the side has disappeared.  Anyone care to walk me through that one?!  I seem to need someone to hold my hand through some fairly menial tasks!

I am so in over my head!  I have set up my Skype account but haven’t Skyped with anyone yet, and now I here we a going to have a Skypecast on Saturday.  This should be interesting!  Talk about a sharp learning curve.  I am hoping to get the webcam figured out tomorrow and do a little practising then be ready on Saturday.  See (or maybe just hear) you on Saturday!

I need to sleep less and “play”on my laptop more.  I am constantly amazed by the information that is out there.  The more I learn the more I realize I don’t know!  I have enjoyed adding information to my blog and checking out all the information on the class blog.  It is an easy way to keep connected to those involved in the course.  How do I go about checking out the blogs belonging to the other class members?  I am curious to read what they have written!

I am a very private person so I value finding ways to keep personal information off the web when it isn’t necessary.   Many of my Grade 4 students have email addresses already and it amazes me how many of them include factual information including their first and last names.  When we set up email addresses for class I will promote aliases like we did for our class.  I am going to try gaggle this year so that I will hopefully have some control.  We’ll see how it goes!

As for security I have had to be careful where my students go on the web.  I often link desired sites to our class site and direct the students to it.  When the students are allowed to use the web a little more freely we review the rules such as click the Back button if you get to a site that doesn’t contain the information you are searching for.  I am also encouraging the students to look at the address and reading its short blurb before blindly clicking on it.  These are just a couple of things I do with my Grade 4’s. 

 I read someone else’s comment about sites being blocked at school.  I have argued this blocking since it started!  I think we are doing the students a disservice!  We need to teach them how to use the web effectively and responsively.  If they are blocked from sites they aren’t going to know what to do when they stumble upon them outside of the school environment (and most likely unsupervised).  We have tried educating our parents but very few come to our information sessions.

I am excited to be learning about blogs.  I hope to share information and viewpoints on various subjects throughout this course.