I got a Blogmeister account set up and had my students upload their first posts today (Thanks again Dave!). We have several finished pieces already, so hopefully by the end of the week we will have several posts going. I’m hoping to get them to finish writing posts about our “cutting edge†project to include a student that is assigned to our class, but has leukemia and can’t come to school, via a Skype audio and video feed. They are SO excited about being part of this and making a difference in someone’s life.
I had hoped we would have that up and going by now but we are still waiting for our donor to deliver a computer (and beggars can’t be “demandersâ€), so that won’t happen until after Christmas. That will give me time to load Skype and other software and maybe install the DSL in her apartment and teach her how to use it so when we return from the Holidays we are up and running.
So three-and-a-half weeks into our 1:1 laptop project we have learned how to log-on, open Appleworks, save, log-onto Flickr, add a photo to our written document, print, log-onto our blog, paste our writing into a blog document and post to our blog. We’ve also used several interactive web sites to practice math, learn about analogies and practice making them and do a bit of research about our state. And that’s just what we have done using tech!.
Learning is messy!