Sweet Dreams and Then Some

Had a great day today in spite of the fact that I woke up at 7:14 and am supposed to be in school at 7:30. The first 45 seconds or so were surreal. First convinced myself that it was Friday (don't know what that was about) then went into full blown panic. Finally calmed down, called school and got my so called act together. I sleep REALLY soundly and this happened once before years ago and resulted in the school secretary banging on my door with my neighbor who she got because she didn't want to be alone when she discovered the body. Oh well, guess it beats insomnia.

Technologically speaking I've been a bit more alert. Been working on our EEVC project which still has me a little flummoxed. Just not absolutely sure what the final product should look like. It's an interesting way to work. It keeps morphing in my mind. Can't wait to see what we finally come up with.

My students are hard at work on their tech projects. I was having a hard time explaining to them what they were supposed to be doing and then two things happened. First I realized the idea was to let them figure something out on their own which it turns out they were more than happy to do. Second in researching digital storytelling I read somewhere that with kids it's best to let them work with the images first and then work on the narrative. Bingo. I was concentrating too much on the writing (being a literacy teacher) and that is of course the least interesting part for them. However once they have chosen and played with some images the words flow. The pace has definitely picked up.

I've delicioused, skyped, stumbled, marrateched, smartboarded and now blogged. It's been a fairly productive week and it's only Monday. I loved the mini-p's last week. Colette's Picaboo ideas are inspiring. I'm going to give them a shot with some of my "reluctant" writers. Ditto Rita's youTube. How great are middle schoolers? They're so inventive.

Looking forward to our work with Dr. Weston. I love thinking about things like that. Does make me wish that I was at the beginning of my career though. I believe education is in for a sea change and I can't wait!!

Here's a cool thing I did. Try it. Go to Wordle and enter your delicious user name. The result is very informative.