Monday, December 31, 2007

December Fire
Photo by our lovely Artist in Residence!

Happy New Year All! This photo was taken by our daughter when we were visiting with my sister and her family at a cabin on the Llano River in central Texas. We celebrated a late Christmas with them, and we had a wonderful, fun, relaxing time!

Here's hoping that we're all rested up and ready for the new year--we go back to school on the 2nd! YIKES! Ready or not...

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Cool Kindergarten Blog!

Wow! It's been over a month since I posted! I'm wondering if I'm cut out for this! I have just been swamped and I've gotten out of the habit of posting. Hmmm..

Anyway, today I was listening to EdTechWeekly, which is one of my favorite edtech podcasts, and I went to their website to see host Jennifer Maddrell's graduation picture (just earned her PhD--impressive!).

One of the congrats posts was from Maria Knee, whose kindergarten blog is here. What a fantastic blog! She's used all sorts of web2.0 tools, like Slideshare, VoiceThread, Bubbleshare, YackPack, etc. to share what her kids are doing with the world. It's just an excellent example of what can be done to connect kids to the world and to let parents/grandparents/community members into their children's learning. Very exciting. And kudos to her school district for allowing use of those tools. Most of these are blocked in my district--and many, many other districts, to state it fairly!

Bottom line: this is a fantastic web site to share with teachers to show just what kinds of projects even the youngest of students can don that take advantage of the technology that we have available. I certainly think the students in Ms Knee's classes/school will remember their kindergarten experiences. What fun they seem to be having learning!