Coming July 9th - edcampLouisiana

On Saturday July 9th on the campus of UNO the first Louisiana unconference will take place. As one of the organizers, I proudly present edcampLouisiana. What, no thunderous applause? Oh, you don’t know what an unconference is and you’ve never heard of an edcamp. Well, not so no ago I stood right where you are standing now – with the same confused look on my face too.

Unconferences like edcamp and TeachMeet have been springing up all over the country. I had originally thought I would host a TeachMeet in New Orleans, but when Valerie Burton, another STAR in my district approached me and asked about organizing an edcamp I decided to join her efforts. The rest of our team includes: Brian Mull, Director of Innovation with November Learning; Tiffany Whitehead, Teacher Librarian in Baton Rouge; and Carl Gaines, a high school teacher from Violet.

I will be updating this blog as edcamp draws nearer, but today I just wanted to get your gears turning. I am starting out with a little history quiz. Do you know where the first edcamp was held? Do you know who the co-founders were? Better yet, do you follow any of them of Twitter? Oops, that’s not a history question. Well just head on over here to get the answers. (I cheated and had Dan Callahan, one of the co-founders, email me the answers. It pays to be connected on Twitter.)

Oh, and don’t forget we have a date. Mark your calendars for July 9th. It will be an experience like no other.

(I cross-posted this on the Louisiana DEN blog.)

A "Tweet" Surprise

I love being able to participate in #elemchat on Saturday afternoons. This chat takes place on Saturdays from 4-5 CST.

Today we were discussing assessment and how we use it to guide our teaching. As I was participating in #elemchat on Twitter today this tweet popped into my Mention column on TweetDeck-

@metrychick, aka Celeste Haar, is a parent of a former student of mine. Several years ago Celeste and her daughters decided that homeschooling was the way for them to go. Celeste, I want you to know that it still saddens me that you are no longer a part of public education. It was so sweet of you to take the time to send out this validation of my teaching. Thank you, Celeste.

2nd Twitter Anniversary

I meant to post this on my second anniversary but I missed it by three days. I joined Twitter on February 25, 2009. I reflected on my one year anniversary here and wanted to update what I've been doing with regards to Twitter this year.

I am following 926 people, I have 2,576 followers, I have tweeted 6,440, and I am included on 180 lists. I use TweetDeck on my computer and iPhone to keep up with my Twitter stream, mentions, direct messages, as well as certain hashtags. I currently have 12 columns tracking things like #comments4kids, #elemchat, #jppss(the district where I work), and #ISTE11 to name a few. I change columns to follow what is going on at conferences such as EduCon, ICE, Reform Synposium, K12Online Conference from time to time.

During the past year I got to spend time with some of my PLN (personal learning network) members at Estes Park, Colorado before we all headed over to Denver for ISTE10. I was able to get a ticket to attend TEDxDenver ED thanks to seeing tweets about it. While at that event I won a PolyVision Eno interactive whiteboard. I presented online for the K12 Online Conference because of Twitter and was invited to present on Classroom 2.0 Live which I attend most Saturdays and tweet about each week. I was invited by @bethstill to be part of a panel that will present at ISTE11 this year in Philadelphia. Thanks, Beth.

My students and I have connected with over a dozen classrooms so far this school year via Skype. Lots of those connections were started on Twitter. Read about some of those connections here and here.

If you are a new educator to Twitter you might want to check out this LiveBinder by Steven W. Anderson (@web20classroom). It contains lots of helpful information. By the way Happy Twitterversary to my friend, Steve. He and I share the same start date.

Kick Start - Activity 3 (Add Some Muscle)

Well today while enjoying the day off in observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday holiday, I learned a new trick. I learned how to add pages to my Blogger account so that I could add an About Me page in response to Edublogs' Teacher Challenge. I also updated My Complete Profile which is a built in part of the Blogger platform.

I am excited to now have a separate About Me page on my blog. I feel like a big kid now. Now that I have been successful in Spring cleaning my blog's About Me section let me know what your feelings are about my upgrade. Did I include too much information? Would you add to or delete anything?

Kick Start - Activity 2

Well I've been working on the second activity of the Edublog Teacher Challenge. Since Glogster.edu is one of my favorite Web 2.0 tools I decided to create a glog about what makes a great blog post.

I am doing some thinking about the direction I want to take my blog this year. It is definitely a mixed bag of various types of posts - tool reviews, reflective pieces, answers to challenges, etc. I want to write more about what I learn from my PLN and I want to write more often but time seems to get away from me because of the many things I am trying to do each day.

Are you happy with your blog? What is your focus? Do you mind reading someone's blog who writes about quite a mix of topics? What draws you to read a post? What makes you take the time to leave a comment?

Checking Out Montage-A-Google

Today I read about Montage-A-Google on Jeff Thomas' blog. I tried it out on a couple of searches that I wasn't thrilled with but I finally typed in fleur di lei and got the image below. I guess it has possibilities.

Wildlife Finder from BBC

While doing a search for a bird picture for one of my students, I discovered this BBC site. While exploring the site I found this video and hundreds of others that would be great to use with my students and it's not blocked at school.



Check it out and let me know what you think about it.