Snowball Effect

I would like to credit this class with my current addiction to blogging. I have recently started a food blog and I am so motivated and inspired to keep up with it and make it engaging and interesting for others. While I do not share this enthusiasm with my grad school blog, probably because I do not yet have a classroom, I can see how I could become very engaged in it should a classroom find me next year. I also love that I could have students contributing to the blog. Now that I am balancing two blogs at once, new questions have arisen... I have to have the same "About me" info on both blogs because they are linked through the same email address..does anyone know if this can be changed? I have also spent more time looking for different layouts and gadgets, a task that, for my first blog consisted of " well that will do" for my background and picking assigned gadgets. Having the freedom to run my own blog about my passion has been the best way for me to use what I have learned in this class and expand my knowledge and experience base.

Skype Session 2

I must admit that I am getting hooked on the ideas of skyping both for myself in terms of connecting with far flung family members and a brother in the Service, but also as a teacher. While I still don't have my own classroom after 2 years searching...I have gained so many ideas of how this classroom technology can be used! Lisa posted a video from the classroom of Ms. Dunsinger which I was blown away by. Lisa's Blog  With students going back to their neighborhood schools, teachers are incorporating a multitude of learners, with and without disabilities into their classrooms. Having worked with children and teens with Autism, making a video to introduce them to the space they will be coming to seems like such a no brainer, yet I have never seen it done, nor thought to do it myself!  This use of technology is even easier with small devices such as flip cams, with these, we can record the daily happenings in our classrooms, even students can be incorporated in this recording process.
Ms Dunsinger's blog is motivating for beginning teachers, like myself. I especially like the story telling aspect that was recently posted. This can give students the chance to post their stories online, collaborate and expand stories and allow parents to view what their student is working on in school. I always thought that creating a blog, wiki space etc would be one more thing I would have to keep up after school hours.
Our skype session with Ms Dunsinger and her students opened my eyes to the fact that we can allow students to take the lead on this classroom technology. This session also let me see how useful Skype can be when teaching classrooms to be "global learners". We can easily collaborate with students in different countries ( as we just did), different states or towns. We can compete, collaborate and learn from one another in a way that was not an option when I was a student.