Tool #3

Finding Online Video and Image Resources

I think we teachers in Life Skills have a limited resource as far as videos are concerned. Teacher Tube and You Tube and Discovery Education seem to be pretty inclusive. As I find more, I will add them to my favorites.

I put videos into my blog in 3 different ways. They are all video shorts about whales or dolphins for my Life Skills kiddies. The first one is just a hotlink. The second one, I used the  You Tube  video embed. The third one is an HTML embed from  Teacher Tube .

http://www.teachertube.com/members/viewVideo.php?video_id=241548&title=Whales

Killer Whales

I finished my Masters and passed my Texas certification in School Library Science a couple of years ago so I am already relatively familiar with Copyright Law and fair use.

I also found Drop Box 5 years ago and have been using it for personal videos. I could use it as a place to store videos and also to create an interface for my students to choose videos to watch..

Tool #2

Building Community in the Online Environment

I did both of the excersizes. I commented in 5 colleague's blogs so that Jan Marie can count my posts. LOL. I also started a Google Reader. Actually, I already had one but it had an ESPN site attached. I added 3 new teaching related blogs. I think that building a PLN can be very useful for those that want to participate. I do think it depends a lot upon one's level of interest and involvement. I think it also will depend a lot upon what we do in our personal lives. Some teachers see their personal life as time spent away from their professional life while others are willing to integrate them. Some like to play on the computer and others shy away from them. These things will come into play. However, I think with the future of technology as it is integrated into education, it will be incumbant upon us all to embrace it to some degree. This will allow us to grow as educators and use information that is readily at hand in a much swifter manner.

This site has a list of 40 good Special Education blogs. I think it is as good as any other place to start gleaning information.

Top 40 Special Education blogs

or

http://www.onlinedegrees.org/top-40-special-education-blogs/

Tool #1

Getting Started - Creating your blog!

As a teacher who has already trained to be a librarian, I already have experience with blogs and many Web 2.0 tools. I already had a Blogger account set up so all I needed to do was add a blog. I will say that Blogger does a terrible job of explaining how to organize your blog. They could be a lot more clear on where  the tools are within the site and how to find and use these tools. Once you get used to it, it can be fun but it also can be frustrating learning how to use it.