Now it’s really late, but I don’t mind - I had to post.  I’ve just got off a skype call with Clay Burell.  Yesterday I didn’t know Clay but he was in the chatroom of David Warlick’s Keynote to kick off K-12 Online Conference.  I used twitter to ask for student blogs for my students to read and comment on.  The result was amazing!  Ask and ye shall receive stuff. 

Check out the links I was able to put on our class wiki to look at tomorrow!

A bit later in the conversation, Clay was generous enough to share some links to student blogs that he thought my students would enjoy.  This then culminated in a skype call, using Yugma, and together we created a wikispace called YoungWriters07.

We want this to be a space that teachers can go to to find blogs for their students to read and/or comment on , and/or for a teacher to add blogs to, to increase a blog’s audience.

If you’ve got students that blog, please add them to the wiki.  If you’ve found really good student blogs and the Teacher doesn’t mind, please add them to the wiki.

Let’s get student conversations and connections humming!

The last few days have just been jam-packed with exciting, inspiring and motivational activity.

It started with my second attempt at webcasting by interviewing Kim Cofino (see this blog post) which graduated into an Amazing Day.

A day later I find myself in Kim Cofino’s Google Docs Presentation to Parents of the School - helping them to understand what it is that this technology is doing for their children and the possibilities of collaboration that are available for them and what the benefits are, what the safety issues are and what will be done to minimise those risks. Kim used the power of twitter to call on us to help with the presentation and it was really a who’s who of educators in there! From inside the Google Docs Presentation chat Kristin Hokanson asked for people to show up at her presentation to teachers on Social Bookmarking, again presenting with Google Docs. A few hours or so later this culminated in a really great discussion or two about how educators are using Del.icio.us for themselves and in classroom with students. I’ve been using Del.icio.us for a while now but I still learnt a few more cool things that it can do! Google Docs Presentations so needs audio!!

Uploaded with Skitch!

Today I was lucky enough to be bought into the conference call of three of my fellow webcasting academy interns starting their monthly show TeacherTalk, as they chatted to their very first guest, Jennifer Wagner. Jen was sharing with everyone about her technopuds projects such as O.R.E.O project and Salute to Seuss. I am so grateful to Jen and all that she does for connecting teachers and technology, encouraging and motivating us to use technology in the classroom and share it with others at a level that we are comfortable at.

Uploaded with Skitch!

Phew! What a whirlwind of past days. Can you guess that it’s the school holidays?

It’s 1.55am, Saturday 21 September - first official day of the school holidays and I’m pumped!  I have finally, yes finally managed to webcast, stream and record on www.worldbridges.net Sandbox B!

At 6.30am EST I put out a call for help from mac webcasters.  Dave Cormier was busy changing his son’s nappies but he still managed to stop me from feeling all alone with a problem with my mac settings for successful streaming - even though he wasn’t able to help me with my particular issue at the time.  Into the conversation popped Lee Barber.  This wonderful lady is so full of audio knowledge - she is amazing! Susan VG offered her help too, In next to no time we were streaming via Channel 1 on Worldbridges sharing our  settings, steps and issues on the Equinox Worldbridges Webcastathon as a show and  a few minutes after tweaking port numbers there I was streaming on Sandbox B!  Durff gave me a twitter of support too!

After all the troubleshooting, worry and frustration I’ve been through with trying to stream and record audio with my Toshiba Satelite  Laptop with an HDRealtek Audio Soundcard - I can’t believe how simple webcasting is with a Mac.  I love my new Mac!  No VAC needed, just Nicecast (many, many thanks to my wonderful Webcast Academy Partner Jason Hando) and Skype.

Now I’m ready for Sunday - my good friend Kim Cofino has agreed to chat with me on Sandbox B at 4pm Bangkok time, 9pm New Zealand Time and 9am GMT during the Equinox Webcastathon on WorldBridges.net.  We’re going to be discussing our collaborative ProjectFeelGood we did earlier in the year, along with some more collaborative projects we’re involved in or have been involved in lately.  It’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m really excited about it.  So if you’re around please join us at www.worldbridges.net/listen on Sunday 23 September 2007.  A huge thank you to Jeff Lebow and Dave Cormier over at wordbridges and EdtechTalk and Webcast Academy for making all of this possible.   I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again - you guys rock!

Just had to pass on this site that I got via twitter from my webcasting partner Jason Hando.

_{These are the best Web applications there are. We know because you told us.}

_{Over the course of 20 days in May and June, the community of Webware.com users voted for its favorite Web applications. These are the results: the top 100 Web apps, 10 in each of 10 categories, determined by Webware readers and the fans of the sites that made the final cut.}

_{About the Webware 100 awards}

_{Rafe’s analysis of the results}

_{There were more than 5,000 nominations for sites to be included in this awards program, which Webware’s editors pruned to a list of 250 finalists. Users then voted on those finalists–there were 489,467 votes cast–to come up with these: The top 100 Webware sites for 2007.} 

Twitter is so cool!