Podcasts

We learned about podcasts this week & it's extremely interesting. Michele shared her screen & showed the class how to use iTunes to search for, and listen to various podcasts. They seem to have one for every topic! It is such a neat way to get information, whether it be for educational purposes or just for fun. You can search for podcasts by a specific subject, by popularity, OR by popularity of a specific subject! If you haven't finished listening to your podcast, you can pause it & listen to it later...how neat is that?!!

Google-rific!

Is there anything Google can't do?! I mean seriously, they have the search engine, e-mail, docs, reader, images, video, maps, calendar...just to name a few! Yesterday we learned about Google Calendar - what a great tool to help keep you organized!

Thanks to Google Calendar, dogs all over the world can rest assured that they won't be blamed for eating anyone's homework, because now teacher's can post the assignments on here & share them with parents!

Relief!

Well, my tool time is done & I survived!!! I was a bit aprehensive since I have had trouble sharing my screen in the past, but this time it went pretty smooth! I shared a tool called BeFunky, which is an online photo editing website which allows you to edit your photos for free! This tool can be used for educational purposes as well as for fun. You can enhance your photos and make a digital scrapbook for a history class, or flashcards for an english class...the possibilities are endless!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy belated Mother's Day to all the Mommies, both of human kids & furry, four-legged ones!! I really enjoyed watching Kathy's jing on Knol, what a great collaboration tool for teachers. It reminds me of an online newspaper where you can be the "author."

In other news...I had my tool time handout nearly finished when my 18-month old son decided that it would be a good time to familiarize himself with the keyboard, among those keys, the delete button! Needless to say, I will be re-doing the handout!! Fun, fun, fun!!

Congrats!

What a great showcase last night! It made me that much more nervous to do my capstone seeing the amazing job that the presenters did. I cannot wait until I can say that I am a graduate of the MAIT program, still have 4 more classes to get under my belt before I can proudly say that!

I was very happy to learn that the library session that I missed was being archived the entire time, big thanks to Amy for that!!

To Infinity and Beyond!

Pardon the title, I have just been watching Toy Story on repeat for the past 3 days as it's the only thing that keeps my 18-month old son's attention while I'm in the midst of "potty bootcamp" with my daughter!!!

I must say that it seems like this class is much more active on Bb right out of the gate. I am enjoying listening to the class on my way home from work through the call-in feature - it makes it easier to stay caught up with what is going on in the class. We are lucky to have Brian & Michele there to answer any questions that might arise when Amy is offline. I loved Ericka's first blog post where she said she can actually help people now!!! That is such a great feeling to be a veteran Wimba-er!!!

I especially enjoyed learning about Google Docs. It seems to be extremely user friendly & makes it easy to keep everything in one place...how convenient!

Can you hear me now?

Let me just start off by saying that I love the call-in feature! This was the first time I've ever used it & couldn't believe how easy it was and how well I could hear everyone in the class!!

I hung up while they were watching a few tutorials so I could save my minutes, but I called back into the room once they were all finished watching the tutorials.

We saw a demo of Prezi from Ericka which was very informative & a great refresher since I haven't used it since Intro. We also saw a quick demo of Tagxedo which is one of my favorite tools from Intro.

This class seems very active already on Bb & I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's materials!