1st day of Real Video

Today the students worked on coming up with a script for the anti-bullying videos. My first group worked on a script that took place by the reflecting pond that addressed bullying after school. The 2nd group decided on working on a script that deals with bullying in the lunch room. The groups are slowly coming together. This was a much better experience than the first lesson!!

Time 2 hours

After School September 22nd

Today was the first day that we began filming for our announcements. The students decided that they would like to focus on making anti-bullying. To get the students used to me (I don't teach any of these students during the school day) we played some team building games by the reflection pond at school. Once we did this we practiced filming with the flip video. The students practiced filming our Principal who did a hilarious version of "How Not to Walk in the Halls".
Time 2 hours

After School Day 2

Today I worked with the students on how to create a xtranormal video. This lesson did not go anywhere near where I wanted it to go.  I feel like I good lesson but I know that I did not reach my audience. When major stumbling block for me was getting the students to register for an account. Most of the students in my afterschool group do not have e-mail accounts. I changed the lesson once I assessed the needs of the learners  and we were all able to particpate by using my account. I was pretty bummed about today's after school assignment

Time Spent - 2 hours

First After School Lesson

I worked with the After School Program for the first time today.  It has taken a few weeks to get the program up and running. We have had to wait for the grants and the paperwork to materalize but this was the first day. Most of the students that I worked with today are students who have a difficult time in the classroom both behaviorally and academically. That's cool with me though because I always like a challenge. Today was a small group containing 5 boys and 2 girls. I went over with them what we would be doing this semester with Web 2.0 skills on Tuesday and creating, editing, and publishing video on Thursday. They were very excited.

Time Spent 2.5 hours

Meeting with the Media Speciliast

Today at  12:00 Shawn Hinger (Our Clarke Middle School Library Media Specilist) met to talk about the After School Media Club that I will be heading up this fall. The club will meet twice a week after school. We will designate Tuesday as Tech Tuesdays where I will be teaching students Web 2.0 skills such as starter pages, google docs, making a wiki, etc.. Thursdays will be devoted to promoting literacy through digital media.  Students will make podcasts, self produced videos, animoto, xtranormal etc...  I am very excited about starting off tomorrow.  We met for 1 hour this morning.

COMO Conference 2010: Canidate Leader

I attended the COMO conference in Athens, GA in October  14th-15th  2010.  This was a great conference and confirmed my belief that I wanted to work in the Instructional Technology Field. The keynote speaker was Michael Porter who spoke about the future of libraries and teaching and working and visiting libraries from around the world it was very interesting.  I attended a morning session about USA vs China schools. This was very interesting. The teacher who led the panel had traveled to China to visit their schools and libraries and talked about the similarities and differences.  I then went to lunch in downtown Athens with a Georgia Author! (Long and interesting story) For the first afternoon session I went to a lecture that was given by the Athens Clarke County Library about using social media in the library. This is something that was alot of interest to me. The session was about how and why the ACC library uses twitter and Facebook to promote their library. The final afternoon session I went to was given by none other than our own GSU Instructional Technology Department and it was based on the Horizion Report. I was impressed with the findings of the report and also impressed with all of the different Web 2.0 software that was used to show the findings of the report. This was my first indoctrination of all the new and exciting web based presentation software.  The second day I attended another lecture by Michael Porter and also a very interesting workshop on the creation and use of wikipedia. I learned about the history of Wikipedia and how it can be used in the classroom. The closing speech was given by Buffy Hamilton. Also, presented was the future of technology. This was very interesting because it included things such as brain controlled machines, a computer the size of a pen, and other new technologies. Overall this was a very worthwhile conference and I am glad I went. I felt that I grew professionally from the COMO conference.  Time 16 hours