More PD - Russia Space Station, Digital Storytelling, Webinar

Sunday morning after Thanksgiving company went home I spent several hours looking at videos and topics at Classroom2.0 web site.  One of the most interesting videos was a tour of the International Space Station.  It's not my subject matter but I found this most fascinating.  Several years ago I read the book Off The Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard The Space Station MIR, and was hooked.  It's written by a medical doctor from Michigan who spent five months on the Mir space station (it's last manned mission).  If you haven't read the book I highly recommend it - he's conceited but if you can look past that, it's a fascinating account on life aboard the Mir, problems encountered, and an interesting account on US and Russia relations. 


Anyway . . . back to the video.  I loved it.  It walks you all around the current space station.  It's amazing to me that several astronauts from around the world live and work together gather information for scientific study. 

I also watched Digital Storytelling video which I didn't find as useful as the communication between followers.  I started reading posts that dated back to March 2010 and one link in particular that had story starters and other lesson plan ideas.  I spent the next couple of hours just reading all the links associated with this - also bookmarked some on my Delicious account to use later.  I ended up finding several site with some good lesson plan ideas on how to teach digital citizenship.  I signed up for Digital Citizenship and Creative Content program which provided some well designed lesson plans.  I'm excited about reading these plans and developing a project to use in Online B class.  This was well worth the time I spent searching today. 

More to come - Webinars.  I signed up for two CIW Webinar for Tuesday December 7 and Wednesday, November 8.  If Alice will arrange for a sub I should be good to go.  Topic: Creating a Standards-Compliant Site.  I'll post my thoughts on the Webinars later in the month.

Online PD: Audacity

The first PD I did was a few weeks ago using an Audacity tutorial I found on the web.  I had never used this program and I was looking for something that would convert wav to mp3 files so students could upload their podcasts.  I found the tutorial extremely useful.  I'm not one to figure out how things work on my own . . . I usually look at the owners manual before playing.  When I work with Online tools, it takes me longer than the average person . . . so finding this tutorial was a great benefit.  I also posted the link on my class blog so my students could view it at home before they had to use the program in class.  Most were able to use the program without further instruction after they watched the video.  Of course I had a few that didn't watch the video and a few special ed students who may have watched it but couldn't remember the steps.  But overall it worked great.
Audacity Tutorial  - YouTube (may have to be viewed at home)