Chapter 6

We have been reviewing a chapter a week of Austen Rae's book and I'm pleased that on week six we still have about a dozen dedicated participants. I took this shot because Orange Planer, a dragon, sat beside me most of the time, while an owl, Elphaba Helendale, sat near Austen. You never know what you will see in SL. We had a lively discussion about students writing historical fiction and becoming so excited Austen had two different related multimedia projects going on at once in her classroom!

Chapter 3 Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?

This week we talked about using multimedia. In her book, Julie D. Ramsay talks about how the children attended an ISTE Webinar for teachers about digital storytelling and became so excited they wanted to create digital stories of their own. Students wrote about famous people from history and told how our lives would be different today if those people had not ever lived.

This session was not as well attended. All the other VSTE facilitators were busy with PTA open houses or had no power still from a recent hurricane. It's not our regular meeting night anyway. Attendees felt like a lot of teachers were busy with the beginning of school. We agreed to continue meeting Thursday nights as planned, with additional advertising this week.

Chapter 1 of Book Study "Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?" by Julie D Ramsay

21 members attended including several CRSs from Virginia Beach, teachers from all over the country and Deeds David from China! One VBCPS principal was in attendance. Back channel was active and Austen Rae did a great job of answering our questions.

Movie by Cyrus Hush

Elisa Carbone Visits VSTE Island

We started off our second book talk with the author's visit. Mandie arranged for Elisa to call her on the phone and be in SL via voice from phone to headset. It was pretty good! Elisa talked about how and why she wrote the book, "Blood on the River," about Samuel, a real boy at Jamestown. She discussed her research methods. She talked to Jamestown docents, read primary sources, visited the archeological dig, and camped in the Jamestown area in the late spring. She knew the sounds, smells, and feelings Samuel and the others might have had living in SE Virginia in 1607 without the amenities we have today.
Elisa does not use a computer for communication and has only just started using it to compose her current book. She looks away while typing because the screen bothers her. She has always written, edited, and rewritten her books by hand.
VSTE members asked many thoughtful questions and Mandie read them to Elisa via phone. Mandie will send her our text chat along with photos we took via US mail. What a strange mix of 20th and 21st century, but it worked!