Here we are at Teacher Tech Camp 2009!  We have teachers from all over our district here at the Technology Training Center for 4 fun-filled days to learn a ton about using technology in their classrooms/libraries/schools.  What a great resource!

I’m teaching a lesson on Blogging!  More later….

Students all over our district have been researching, writing, drawing, painting, cutting, pasting, sculpting, and creating in the development of their Spring Exhibition projects. We have a few seventh grade students who have been blogging and podcasting as well. They have chosen to publish their research on Brazil via a blog and podcast.

Their blog has been a “work in progress” (as it should be) with multiple editing sessions and a number of podcast attempts. Although they have received guidance, the students have done all of the work themselves in setting up the blog, choosing the blog theme template (multiple times), selecting and importing the pictures, writing the post, writing and recording the podcast, etc.

They’ve done a great job! If you’d like to visit their blog and listen to their podcast, just click on the picture of their blog home page on the left.

Keep reading and keep learning!

I’ll be at the MCS Technology Conference for the next two days, soaking in as many techie tidbits, tips, and tools as my brain will allow.  I’ll also be sharing my somewhat limited techie experiences at the conference, co-presenting with two other MCS librarians, Carmen Carr and Kimberly Sanderson.  The three of us have put together a session on blogging, wikis, podcasting, and other Web 2.0 tools called interNETWORKING.  We’re presenting at 9:00 on Thursday (today) and 10:15 on Friday.

I love the Technology Conference.  It’s a great opportunity to find out what everybody else is doing out there in the district.  I’ve found from past experience that I only remember and put into practice about 15 to 20% (that estimate may be ambitious) of the ideas I hear about at the various sessions I attend, but those ideas that have stuck have made a huge difference in how I use technology and view the internet.  I can’t wait to find out what sticks this time!

Keep reading and keep learning!

(I’m going to try this post one more time…  Originally I embedded a YouTube video, then remembered that it wouldn’t play on our school computers.  I then tried to embed a version of the same video from TeacherTube but couldn’t get it to play.  This time, I’ve downloaded the video from YouTube, translating it into a .mov file using www.vixy.net.)

Can you believe that RSS actually stands for “Really Simple Syndication” instead of something obnoxiously technical like “Replicated Streaming System”? I find that very refreshing…

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I use a free RSS feed reader called Bloglines to subscribe to a number of blogs and news websites. I’ve received a couple of questions about how exactly a RSS feed reader works. I’m going to include a video called RSS in Plain English at the bottom of this post. I think it’ll explain it better than I can here. As you start using Bloglines or Google Reader or whatever site you decide to use to subscribe to RSS feeds, remember it CAN get out of hand if you are not careful. In the past couple of years, I’ve had to delete almost as many of my subscriptions as I’ve added to ensure I’m not forever glued to my computer reading an ever-increasing number of posts. The whole point is to SAVE time, right?

See below for the RSS in Plain English video..

Download

I was wondering why I couldn’t subscribe to our Tech Camp participants’ blogs and continue to get subsequent posts in my RSS feed reader.  I finally wondered about this when I had the time and inclination to check into it further through the Edublogs Help and Support blog, The Edublogger.

The answer was found in a two step process…  (Without the second step, subsequent posts still don’t show up in my RSS feed reader, which pretty much defeats the purpose.)  The second step in this process requires you become an Edublogs Supporter at a cost of $25 annually.  I thought it was a small price to pay for this next endeavor in my blogging adventure.  Check out the Edublogger posts on Adding a RSS Feed from FeedBurner AND Redirecting your Blog Feed to FeedBurner for detailed instructions.  It’s easy and your readers will thank you for allowing them to subscribe to your blog through their favorite RSS reader.

Keep reading and keep learning!