Photography Class in SL

I was supposed to be a helper to the teacher. As it turned out there were few students so I joined their ranks. Olivia Hotshot taught part one of her two part Photography in SL series for ISTE. Tuxedo Ninetails facilitated it by advertising and organizing. Tuxedo is in charge of such offerings by ISTE. They have a name that escapes me at the moment.
We learned all about settings for our SL application to improve our photos. Olivia had us sign up for Snapzilla and Flickr. We used our cameras to take photos of the class, each other, and finally of ourselves. Along the way we views Olivia's Photo Garden. MMMMM beautiful!

Olivia was very generous with photography equipment and directions. We received an SL book with her slideshow in it and pose balls to use to create our own photo booth.
I must say I enjoyed posing. :-)

Awesome K1 teacher in SL

I met an inspiring teacher at ISTE this morning! Her Twitter name and SL name is K1looper. She teaches kindergarten in north Ohio and will loop with them to first grade. She does amazing things with her kindergarten class on the web. Here is her classroom wiki for parents http://sheploop.pbwiki.com/ and here is her classroom blog http://www.classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=214460 . Yes, her students blog! By far the most precious thing is the Yoki's they created. I will stop thinking that kindergarten students are too young to use Web 2.0 tools! K1 has agreed to speak at VSTE in SL sometime this summer.

Training for Helping with Photography Class

We ISTE members often get opportunities to help run programs with experts. This was such an opportunity. When I signed up for it I didn't know my friend, Mandie from VSTE, was going, too. That was a nice surprise. We in fact were the only two participants. There is another training session for others later. The actual photography class will be taught in two two-hour sessions on Saturdays from 5 to 7 PM my time. Unfortunately this training was from 11 to 12 midnight on a school day. Zzzzz Come, Spring Break!

Scott Merrick's TED Movie Sessions

On Monday nights immediately following the VSTE meeting ScottMerrick Oh has a viewing of a TED video at his hangout on Lighthouse Learning Island. It's more fun than you would think! We avies sit around on cushions, read the brief descriptions of the four movies available, vote for the one we most want to see and then view together. Back chat is welcome! It's so much fun. Scott typicially counts down so we can all start our video at the same time and be relatively in sync. It never works! He and I are usually in sync with the majority of others close behind and at least one person ends up woefully behind or without ever getting video to work. Back chat consists of us all typing remarks about what we are currently hearing and seeing, often tongue in cheek comments about serious subjects. These people are all smart and educated (not me though) and I love hearing the banter! It's a great way to calm down after leading the VSTE meeting, which tends to be stressful for me. (It's a bit like throwing a shower in your home - constant worry about whether everyone is having a good time and not sorry they came!)

VSTE Team Meetings

We decided recently that we needed to hold team meetings and agreed on Wednesday nights at 9 PM our time. Here we are in the VSTE Community Center board room. We discuss upcoming meetings, calendar, related PR events, and upcoming conferences. We have been invited to be in a podcast by Sebastien Lucero (SL) AKA John Hendron (RL). Marie has VBTV coming to see her students benefit from the Grant she got for VSTE Island's Jamestown. She has graciously invited us to participate. We plan meetings up to a month or more in advance. We each take turns. It's pretty easy to do when there are four to share the weeks. You barely get one turn a month. So many awesome people are willing to help us. We have several guest speakers lined up. We are still working out what exactly the NECC 2009 conference in DC is going to be like. We aren't doing much, a little volunteering and one session on VSTE in SL and professional development there. It sounds like VSTE in Roanoke in Nov. 09 will be very much like VSTE in Feb. in Virginia Beach. That's wonderful. There is probably never going to be another three days like that, but it will be nice to try.

Combining Universal Design for Learning and Technology to reach all learners

JessieMarie Flanagan presented at DEN this Wed. Here is the description of the session. I can't really add a lot to that. :-) I found that we do a lot of what UDL calls for already in Virginia Beach. This was a feel good session for me. I love the casual, confident way that JessieMarie presented at her session. DESCRIPTION: The Universal Design for Learning model, developed by CAST in 1994, is a helpful framework for organizing learning experiences that reach all learners in the classroom. Explore successful examples of UDL learning journeys that embrace diversity, meet learners where they are, and help you successfully meet your curriculum goals.

VSTE Meeting April 6

Alfredo was in charge of the VSTE meeting April 6th. He always has different ideas than we girls come up with. I guess we girls aren't really all that similar either, but I enjoy seeing what Al will do. This week he introduced Nings. Several people really don't know what nings are so this was very educational. To get us to use the ning Al offered prizes for completing tasks and uploading them there. We had three notecards to choose from. Each sent us to a different sim. I chose Africa. Here I am with the baby giraffe wearing the Africa t-shirt, part of the assignment. We met in Paris at the end where we flew hang gliders to the ground. I didn't win but we all had a great time!