Day 1: I just created my very first blog!  How exciting!  Steve and Lynne have ignited my curiosity about the possibilities of incorporating technology, specifically, Web 2.0, into the classroom. I appreciate the step by step directions, modeling, opportunites to practice and encouragement to explore.  There has been a great balance of information and practice and plenty of support. 

Day 2:  Today we had the opportunity to experience working on a wiki to answer the 33 questions.  It was a novel way to review the answers and allowed us creativity to have fun with how we answered.  I believe that this interaction with the content through careful consideration and collaboration with partners about how to illustrate the correct answer with images or video strengthen our memory of the correct answers because it provided an “episode” to attach to the information.  As educators, we are constantly in search of ways for students to efficiently and accurately retrieve information and this was a new way to consider in order to foster that.  In addition, we explored websites and created our own ‘delicious page where we can store, tag/categorize and share bookmarks with others.  I was probably in a bit over my head at the varsity excel session, but surprised myself by being able to apply what Steve had demonstrated…things like the sum function, the “magic” bottom right corner of the cells, the if, then function, the power of ”Format/Cells” and conditional formatting.  My friends have been pittying me for having to attend this workshop for these long days and my response has been how much fun I am having because I actually get to receive instruction on how to do things with technology that have interested me for a long time and immediately get to try it with support available to make sure I am on track!  I’m loving it!  I am making some connections that I’m certain will prove beneficial to both my classroom and my colleagues. Thanks to a SKYPE session with Sam at Horace Mann, the creator of their school’s LionTECH Institute, a big “aha” for me today was the need for Humanware to support teachers attempts at integrating technology into the classroom…some suggestions were to have a tech person meet with teachers weekly, monthly professional development where teachers give input into the curriculum, a school site to post ideas, projects, and resources with other teachers, allowing teachers the choice to participate in a technology initiative that incorporates these ideas…all of these seem to require an actual person dedicated to just this type of support.

Day 3: Today, we discussed our reading from last night on copyright. We reinforced the fact that it is not the medium that you copy something to, but the brevity, cumulative effect and repetition.  The way I understood it, you can show something once within 10-30 days after copying it.  You are then responsible to contact the publisher for permission if you want to use it again in the future.  In regard to music, we are only allowed to use either 10% or up to 30 seconds of a song on projects.  For example, if we create a DVD of photos from the year, we can only use the above time limit of songs on the DVD.  We cannot create a CD of entire songs to distribute to the class unless we have permission from the publisher to use the entire song.  We emphasized the importance of teaching both parents and students what the laws are and then modeling and enforcing them throughout our school.  It was suggested that we have parent meetings on this topic.  There are sites to go to with copyright friendly iamges and music such as www.creativecommons.org.