The course was for Online Course Facilitating.  I learned so much from this class and everyone involved in this course was just great.  There was so much collaboration and sharing of ideas. 

Now, I can start thinking about perhaps one day facilitating an online course.  Would love to focus on Differentiation in the Classroom using Multimedia. 

So many tools, so little time…

I am enrolled in an Immigration course and am reading the book “The Inner World of the Immigrant Child.”  It is a very good book and a must read for any teacher dealing with immigrants.  An assignment in this class was to watch the movie “In America.”  What a great assignment and well worth the time.  Had to go to an ethnic restaurant for one of the assignments, so I chose “The Brazilian Grill.”  It was an interesting experience and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It is nice to take a course that doesn’t always focus on technology.

For my Millennials class, my final project is focusing on professional development in Second Life.  I created a PowerPoint as a tutorial on Microsoft PhotoStory, then saved the PP slides as jpgs so I could upload them to the whiteboard in our school’s building in Second Life.  So far so good.  Then I took one of the student projects that they did in PhotoStory and turned it into a QuickTime movie (through the use of Zamzar).  This allowed me to upload it to the media player in Second Life.  So, now I had the slides for the professional development and the movie for a sample product.  Was hoping to present this at the DEN in Second Life, but they are all booked up for March.

Another project I worked on was the new Google form creator.  It was very easy to make the form, fill it out, and view the results.  Nice part is that you can share the form results (which are in the spreadsheet) with others if you choose. 

For my Universal Design for Learing/Assistive Technology class, I was able to (finally) post a movie on TeacherTube and YouTube.  Created a great polygon diagram in PowerPoint.  Saved the slides as images and put them, again, into PhotoStory.  Put narration to each slide describing the polygons and then turned it into a QuickTime movie using Zamzar.  Uploaded to the Internet and it worked great.

So, it was quite a productive week – even got some cleaning, baking, cooking, shopping, bills, income taxes, and movie watching done.

Love having time to do whatever …

 These are great summaries and introductions to the tools and a way to broaden your knowledge.  The articles focus on questions such as:

• What is it?
• Who is doing it?
• How does it work?
• Why is it significant?
• What are the downsides?
• Where is it going?
• What are the implications for technology and learning?

Find articles on tools such as Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Wikis, RSS, YouTube, Podcasting, Social Bookmarking, and the list goes on.

As my final project, I chose to work on something different – Second Life. I have been investigating Second Life since August when I was hired by Plymouth Public Schools and found out they are one of four school districts collaborating on an island together in Second Life. I have been diligently working in Second Life learning to walk, dress, edit my appearance, build (very limited), edit objects, shop, find out about educational places, go to sessions being given by educational organizations in Second Life, and next I will be learning about presenting in Second Life. Beth Knittle, Barnstable Public Schools, and myself have been offering workshops in Second Life as part of Lighthouse Learning Island.

In an effort to help “newbies” in Second Life, I created a wiki page focusing on Second Life and included a movie I created entitled – Second Life, Oh the Places You Can Go. This movie contains screen shots of educational (and some fun) places in Second Life you can visit. I put the name of the educational site on the screen shot to allow users to search in Second Life for the location.

In closing, I have enjoyed my class and learned quite a bit.

Getting around in Second Life
In this session we will tour various educational venues, as well as, some places of interest. We will learn how to make landmarks so you can easily return for further exploration. We will teleport, use the map, and search tools to help us get around in SL.

Friday November 16 at 7:00 P.M. Eastern time (4:00 P.M. Second Life time)
Repeat on Saturday, November 17 at 7:00 P.M. Eastern time (4:00 P.M. Second Life time)

Organization is Everything
You will quickly find that your inventory can become very unorganized and it can slow you down. In this hands on learning session we will help you clean out and organize your inventory. We will learn to make folders and rename items for easy retrieval.

Friday November 30 at 7:00 P.M. Eastern time (4:00 P.M. Second Life time)
Repeat on Saturday December 1 at 7:00 P.M. Eastern time (4:00 P.M. Second Life time)

Presenting in SL
We are members of a global network of educators and it is time we begin to share our expertise and experiences with others. In this learning experience we will look at the basics of how to present in SL and some of the options and tools to aid in presenting. We will also discuss how to find a venue to host a presentation and ways to advertise.

Friday December 14 at 7:00 P.M. Eastern time (4:00 P.M. Second Life time)
Repeat on Saturday December 15 at 7:00 P.M. Eastern time (4:00 P.M. Second Life time)

MassCUE is holding their 25th Annual State Technology Conference next week — November 14th & 15th in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.  I am very excited about the conference.  Going to attend some great sessions and I am very lucky to be presenting with Beth Knittle on Wednesday.  Our presentation is entitled, “Second Life and Education: Expanding Your Learning.”  On Thursday, we will be available for a “lab” type session where you can bring your laptop and work in Second Life and we will be available for help.

Session Handouts (scroll to the bottom of the Second Life page)

… and yet another great opportunity for professional development.

OVERVIEW:
There will be four “conference strands”– two each week. Two presentations will be published in each strand each day, Monday – Friday, so four new presentations will be available each day over the course of the two-weeks. Each presentation will be given in any of a variety of downloadable, web based formats and released via the conference blog (www.k12onlineconference.org) and archived for posterity.

View more information.