Slowly getting sucked back in....

It does seem when August rolls around, the long fingers of the district office, the school, the calendar start asking - actually, some are demanding - a place on my vacation calendar. Vacation - that oh-so-longed-for thing of beauty that comes and goes in a breath. We had a long long year up here in the Seattle area with six or some snow days (not much snow there, just bad weather and windstorm power failures) to make up, bringing our school year to late June. Ouch. Now, my calendar begins to fill and even I start moseying along to web sites to help me prepare for the new year, especially in my role as a tech peer coach.

I'm working on my web site for my teachers, open to all of course, and sometimes it seems like there is so much it is overwhelming, even to me, much less to a classroom teacher who hasn't the passion I have for using this stuff. Curiosity, interest, a positive attitude, perhaps - but not enough to spend the percentage of the time parameters we all have that I use for this stuff. She wants to begin to use it but also doesn't know where to begin. I want to be in that role to guide and introduce, but I do struggle with keeping it simple at the same time I make it interesting enough to "go there."

Has anybody used RapidWeaver for Mac? I am using iWeb to make my pages, but it has some limitations (I'd like to use different templates for example) and the new version that does that will cost another $79.

I'm interested in linking classroom web sites and podcasts to show teachers why and what they can do, now or eventually. If you have one you are proud of and would like me to show off with a link, I'd enjoy using it, being sure to let them know who and where you are. In turn, I have two year's worth of classroom web pages (with some links broken as students have moved on) to share and will, as usual, have a new one come ---
the end of vacation!