Am I coming or going?

What a crazy month this has been.  October was the month that my personal life became crazy and I had planned new units for all 4 grades I teach.  Well we all survived!! My dad had 2 major heart attacks 2 weeks apart but is home and doing pretty well considering. Daughter has wrist surgery this Thursday from injury.  Hubby tore something that starts with an n in knee and surgery for him a week from Tuesday..... AND all new units are up and running. BUT this week I had time to each lunch 3 out of the 5 days which beat my previous record of just 1 day a week for lunch!  So the picture again is rain boots.  Sometimes you just have to get up and start going no matter how high it all gets. God is in control!
I thought I'd share some things I'm learning and using for my 21st Century Tech class.
1. PicasaWeb is helping my Dropbox tremendously. LOL  I'm trying to move more things over since my Dropbox stays full and it is mostly all pictures.  Here is a little slideshow using Picasa Web that I made of my 5th graders who are doing a Rubik's Cube Unit


 
  2. I love Animoto for quick videos with music that looks professional.  Here is a little movie that I will enjoy watching to remember how much fun I had this summer with close friends and my wonderful husband of 25 years.

 3.  The next one that I learned to use is PhotoPeach.  It isn't quite as user friendly in that you can only go to computer, Facebook, or Picasa to get pictures.  Animoto let choose from more like Dropbox, which I liked since I still haven't moved all my pictures over to Picasa. Here is a little quiz that I put together but I think this would be perfect for quick writing prompts. This was a trip I took with my best friend before she died of brain cancer. So much fun we had and since she was a Literacy Coach she would love that I turned it into an inference quiz. :-) FloridaTrip on PhotoPeach
 4. Skype - It's time to get organized and start using this again. I really want to Skype with a classroom in another country with the Mystery Skype program. I haven't had time to connect with a class yet but that is by goal in the month of December. We could even talk about holiday traditions.

 I think that catches me up for all I have been learning and now it's time to get going on lesson plans! Enjoy this Thanksgiving by being thankful for all the wonderful people who were and are still in your life!