It’s Elementary

This week our guests were Kathy Cassidy from Moose Jaw SK , a grade 1 teacher, Leah Welch from Hamden Maine, a grade 1 teacher and formerly a kindergarten teacher, and Amanda Marrinan from Brisbane Australia who teaches 6 and 7 year olds. These teachers do amazing things with their students – blogging, video, moodle, google docs, and more. Kathy, Leah and Amanda sharedtheir practice and talked about the details in how they make things work. The time flew as we all listened to the stories of their work with young children.

Download audio and read the chatroom log.

Our next show will be Monday November 10th at 9:00pm EST. We will be talking about the Connectivism Course currently ongoing through the University of Manitoba. Join us then at EdTechTalk.

We were joined this week by Stephen Lewis, principal of Oak Ridge Elementary. Stephen shared his experiences as principal of a Title One school and how technology is present in the school. Alice Mercer is the tech integrator at the school. Stephen and Alice discussed the issues, joys and challenges of their work. We continued to stream for part of our post show.

Next show – October 6, 2008 where we will talk about the K12Online Conference with the conference conveners.

Download audio here.

We had a great discussion with James Sigler

1. James Sigler shared his background and how he started video-conferencing, including some pertinent points

• It involved serendipity and a willingness to try something new, rather than a technology plan…

2. Why do it?

• Our guest and host shared about the learning connections they’ve made, and students make using this
• We discussed the standards, like NETS Communication and Collaboration and looking on how our students are communicating with authentic audiences.

4. The It’s Elementary team share their experiences

5. And shared barriers to effective implementation or sustainability, blocking and coordinating schedule/time zones came up as the big issues.

We then threw it open and had the audience join in.

Download Podcast at Edtechtalk.com   Here is the text chat from the show.