Video Chat

This is my brother in Germany. We chat every week via MSN messenger. This time; however, I can't seem to find my webcam. As soon as I find where my daughter hid it I will take a screen shot of my in the picture as well.

I love using MSN messenger. On my computer it is a lot faster than skype. And my family in Germany somehow can't get the microphone working on skype, but there's never a problem on MSN messenger.

To be honest I don't think I'll use this in my classroom unless my student is sick and I can't go see the student or the parents can't come get the homework and the student doesn't have friends that can come help. But I think it would just be easier to meet with a student before or after school if the student has questions.

Intro Video

Sorry this is kinda weird, we just had to record something in class so here it is...

Making videos

I have decided that I will be using windows live movie maker for my video (project#2) and it's going to be a video of how to make my favorite french pastry. (Since language classes are also about learning about the culture). The recipe I'll be using is from my baking blog http://lapatisseriejessica.blogspot.com I will be following the steps exactly as shown on the recipe, but since the video is only a few minutes we will have to fast forward some parts. I will also be explaining the history behind this pastry and it's meaning in France.
So far the biggest problem I've been having, is getting so much information in just 1-3 minutes, but I think it makes sense to have that short of a video, how wants to pay attention to something for more than 3 minutes? I've worked on this for about an hour... And the recipe itself takes about 28 hours... so I'll have to make sure to bake it on a Saturday so that I have time to edit the video etc...

Classroom Website

I have set up a sample classroom website at

http://mrsbryansclassroom/home

I decided to use google sites and am glad I did. I recommend that people who like things simple but nice use google sites.

asynchronous and synchronous learning

I really enjoyed using google wave to have a class discussion and creating a document. It reminded me a bit about google docs, just faster and you can see who said what. It was really nice to know that you can work all together no matter where you are.

haben- To Have

PLEs, Purposes and Uses - An Educational Multimedia Report

Using a Website for my Classroom

I have created a test website for a future classroom.

http:/mrsbryansclassroom/home

I think it would be a great tool to have a class website, so that you can post all assignments, you can have a class calendar with all the due dates that your students need to be aware of, you could post study guides. I think it's important to have many different options for your students. While some people from an older generation might prefer to have a calendar on paper, someone from the new generation might rather have an online calendar since he is online all the time and that way he can't lose it, and most importantly his dog can't eat your online calendar ;)