Cool David! I love being a part of the ADE program. I think they are working toward October for new applicants. Keep your eyes open to the ALI site.

I saw your commented on my blog post many moons ago about the Free tech assessment promotion I was trying to do for NECC. Well, they let us do it and we got such an overwhelming response and we saw how much schools really need a test that we decided to give away the entire product, for unlimited amount of students. If you're still in need of a tech assessment (its free...) or know schools who are, the site for the assessment is: www.simpleassessment.com

My district is almost all Mac based, and we are one of the largest in the nation, so I had to conform - but now I don't know if I want to go back! I love using iWeb for my class webpage, unfortunately, my work computer crashed and now I can't access it until the tech person fixes it. The site you listed looks great!

I just noticed you are the mac tech...I'll keep you in mind, ha ha.. I'm a mac enthusiast + iphone ;-)

yeah the 3G iphone, I broke the bank and paid for it out right ;-)

I have a couple of friends who went to BG. I actually graduated from Resurrection in Chicago...(Edision Park area). I was on 2.0 before as Mini, and I think I was connected to you, but for some reason I can't seem to access that account anymore. I'm trying to get back into school mode here, so I just started a new account. Thanks for reconnecting!

That works! :)

We are PC users. I am so new to blogging and I want to get my students into it.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

We work with MAC. How about you? With what grade levels do you work?

Thanks, David! Nice to e-meet you too.

--- Rebecca

Thanks for the tip...I have been looking into that myself. It seems a great choice b/c it does not use the schools bandwidth, it uses a locally stored server. I especially appreciate knowing it works for other schools/districts. Hope all is well with you!

Leslie

Thanks! Blogging has become a wonderful shared writing opportunity for my students. We begin the year writing our weekly blog together (me typing) & then transition into students pairing up to co-author the blog on their own. It's a wonderful way to sum up the week's learning experiences & it has dually become a great way for me to see what the kids learned (and what I perhaps need to revisit). Best of luck getting it set up at your school!

Wow, David, thank you so much for forwarding the info to me about Studio 4 learning. This looks like a great resource and I am excited to share it with the teachers I work with. I appreciate your thoughtfulness!

DAvid, thanks for the http://www.videosurf.com/ site. I have been using the studio4learning but my school's filters won't allow the video to show. I am thinking a way around that would be to embed the video in a wiki or something. Gotta get past those blocks! - Leslie

I get in trouble enough as it is. ; ) What do you mean "white list" the site? Sounds intriguing....! Please tell me more.

Have a great day!

Sadly, I don't have it like that with my tech director. I send my request to my principal for approval who sends it to the tech director who unlocks it...sometimes. I'll find away around it though! Thnx -L

Thanks for checking out the web site and blog. Eventually I will get back to updating that blog!! (It's all in my head ready to be posted...)

A very interesting site. Definitely appropriate for beginner readers. I am thinking also students could make their own for vocabulary exercises, in foreign language classes, and maybe even to quiz in content areas. EX: 3rd grade science unit on habitats...question: cacti live in the...dessert.

Have I thanked you yet for keeping me in the back of your mind and passing on the goods when you come across them...THANK YOU!!!

I sure will pass that along to Peggy. I have only been on here probably since late Summer. That's fine if you use the iWeb. I have so much fun creating on there. I just updated it a little bit for December. I am currently creating a webquest on the Sun,Moon, & Earth using iWeb and am hoping to link that to my current iWeb page. I am really liking the way it is turning out. My goal is to get the kids to create their own pages that contains pieces of work throughout the year. Its a big goal, but its something I know this group would really like. I am doing a "Paperless Day" on Dec. 17th and can't wait to see how this goes. I have some "experts" Skyping in (as long as the dates still work for them I'll have an author and a scientist from Adler). But will def. have to bounce ideas back and forth and I am always up for trying things. I know everyone would be happy to see a visit from ya.

Hey!
Collaborating with Jen's class has been awesome this year! The collaborative writing on Google Docs was very successful. We're both working with our classes to create mathcasts using voicethread (I'm a bit behind). We've tried a virtual book chat using Skype, but we're trying to iron out the kinks before we try it again! It's been such a great learning experience. I know my kids look forward to meeting them face to face!

Hi David,

With Grendale School District's online initiatives I recommend you take a look at Wiziq's web based virtual classroom and authorstream's power point presentation platform. So far these two web platforms havn't been screened or banned by learning institutions.

Yeah-moving up North-don't think its in my cards :-). It is a small world, thanks for sending those other links. I checked out the ustream-for my group too much extra stuff for them to get into. I am going to try downloading the Google video conference to see if that works a little better. Its more with the connection from us to their school because I tried the w/i building one laptop to the other and it was night and day difference. Sound quality had no delays, video image was so nice. But my class looks forward to the next time they work with Melissa's class. We're thinking of our next collab. piece now. Have a great Thanksgiving!

thanks

:) :) Thanks David for your nice words on the blog (hope you liked it so much to cast a vote! ;) )
Entonces, hablas español? :)
Greetings from Valencia.

Thanks for the heads-up. I haven't seen the article yet! :)

Hi David,

I'm sending out messages to everyone I know right now, and this classroom20 network is no exception. (I've also sent this out on other Ning networks you may be a part of.) My name is Alyshia Olsen; I am a 20 year old college student from Olin College of Engineering. I am a part of a group of 6 Olin College students (we're in Needham, MA, and engineering students) who has taken a year off to work on an education related project. Since you are in the 'connecting content and technology' group, I thought you might be interested! Our project is called AlightLearning, and this is our "short" project description:

Under the assumption that within ten years, the landscape of modern education will have fully integrated what we now define as new classroom media: video, online collaboration, open source curriculum and other web tools, we hope to pioneer a web software tool that acts as a platform for this new media, bringing the power of the web and its tools to students, teachers and parents in a secure, comfortable and innovative environment. Our goal is to have our free software at a pilot middle school by April 15th, 2009, continuing to develop and coordinate with our users to create a product that other schools want to pilot and use at their schools, while allowing individual teachers to implement this tool in their own classroom.

Our project, titled Alight Learning, is currently trying to win an idea competition on Ideablob.com You can find us at http://ideablob.com/3975 . We would love your support in the form of a vote within the next couple days, but more importantly we'd love your feedback and comments. Our description on Ideablob is short, and even the one above hardly gets at many of the issues we would like to take a stab at solving, but at least it's a start.

Feel free to email me back, check out alightlearning.com, anything you like!

Thanks,

Alyshia Olsen
anotherdayaway42@gmail.com

Hey David,

Thanks for the comment! I'll keep you posted!
Safety concerns are something that we've been hearing over and over again. I haven't heard of gaggle.net - I'll pass it on to my colleagues and we'll see if we can do something similar to make sure everything is filtered.

Thanks again,

Alyshia
anotherdayaway42@gmail.com

David,

It looks good, though I wish they had a way you could hear the audio while you were online and saw the words...

Larry

Hi David,
After a long hiatus from this site, I'm back. Thanks for the friendly welcome message! My roommate and fellow librarian is also from Arlington Heights, so small world indeed! If I have any questions about running a media center in the Chicago burbs, I'll be sure to shoot them your way!

Katrina

Thanks, David. I'm still fairly new to blogging.

David, many thanks for the compliment and review. You're very kind! I also appreciate seeing blogs of others! Best of luck to you!

David,

Thanks for the "plug." Your blog looks good. I wanted to leave a comment, though, but it didn't appear that was possible.

Larry

Hi David. I was wondering if your students would be interested in participating in a nationwide SAT Vocab Video Contest @ MIT university. Perhaps you have some educator contacts you could direct me to. You can view contest details at BrainyFlix.com Please let me know. Thanks!

Thanks, David, for the boost (re: blog). This has been a particularly stressful week ("I do this (fill-in-the-blank) because ???"). We should all be aware of patting each other on the back! What a better place this would be if we encouraged one another. The head janitor in one of our buildings died unexpectedly, and I always made an effort to tell him often how valuable he was to the building and what a good job he always did. You never know!

Hi David, nice to meet you. :)
Thanks for the feedback on my sites and for the link to Diigo. Currently I am putting together some social networking/social bookmarking materials for a workshop. I may include that, but need to a little exploring first.

Hey, Thanks for the add! I work for 43marks.com. It's a great tool for teachers.. the info is on my profile... You should check it out and let me know what you think.
Thanks again =)

Thanks, I do like my hats. Looking forward to exchanging ideas with you. I didn't add you on FB just because I keep it for personal only. There's a small matter of some embarrasing high school photos where I have really big hair and bad clothing choices that I'm trying to hide from the professional teaching community.

Thanks for checkin it out and sharin diigo... I'll take a look at that site and let you know about 43 ok?

Thanks for the comment though I can't take credit for directing an entire district. I'm an Academic Technology Dir. for a private independent school in California. It's still a huge challenge though. We're 100% mac but considering becoming dual-platform in 2010-2011. Bracing myself for what's to come...

We did a trial of Boot Camp on one of our imacs and it crashed. The kids were bummed as they had work on there that we were unable to retrieve before it crashed. =( Glad to hear it worked for you though. If we do go that route, we're thinking of vm ware.

David,

Thanks, I saw your post. You're right, it is a good tool. I've had my students use it before and have their examples on my website, but I just never got around to posting about it. I subscribe now to your blog, and look forward to your posts!

Larry

Good Morning- thank you as well for sharing your site. Wonderful resources and have just begun to explore your site. Keep up the great work!

Hi there! I'm so glad to connect with you! Thank you for your kind words about my blog---yours is now in my Google Reader! I'm looking forward to networking with you here and through Facebook! :-) Thanks also to Jeff for connecting us---he is a terrific person!

Great! I look forward to hearing what you think. We're always looking for feedback from our users. :)

Thank you, David! I appreciate your kind words and efforts.

I just joined Classroom 2.0 today and am so pleased with such an enthusiastic response.

Please let me know if I can answer any questions you have and I hope to stay in touch.

Thanks David! Three cheers for the Mac users in the world!!! :) Hummm...Mac classroom 2.0...sounds right up my alley!

Thanks, will have a look at yours tonight :-)

Enjoyed your blog! Thanks for the recommendation. I just became a subscriber!

Thank you so much for the invite to see your blog. I love it and am now one of your followers. I like the format of how you introduce new things then give an example - perfect! See you online.