Progress, Making

It's been a while. Too long.

To catch you up, Library Ladies and I have been getting many things done. In addition to the daily tasks of shelving, helping students with research, teaching classes on how to use Galileo, we have several technical goals this year.

We are trying to make our announcements a daily closed circuit production. A couple of weeks ago, we began putting working pieces together and came up with a VHS/analog camera that will do the trick of broadcasting. We had to have assistance from one of our tech. dept. guys who is a former video production teacher. He was very excited to help. He had to do several reconnections with wires in several places. Long story short...we conducted live, video announcements on Friday from the principal's office. We had a few audio difficulties, and I couldn't get the "recording" words off the screen. We are ready to make our request for an AV mixer, and other equipment to make the morning show worthy of production.

Library Lady #1 and I did our first Paw'dCast. It was a booktalk on the book Scrib. Podcasts don't take long to record, it is the editing and trying to make the sound right that takes time. Again, we need better equipment at the school. But I think it will be forthcoming.

We invited some of our old friends (former teachers with us) who are now retired, but working with the local ETTC, to come share some insights on the SmartBoard we have, and how we can get our teachers using them in the classrooms.

I have also had a science teacher ask about how to do a podcast for his class. Several other teachers wish they could have a class blog, but so many of the sites are blocked at the school, that this is almost impossible. On the other hand, with teachers finding out about the Web 2.0 technologies, it may be a matter of time before the revolt takes place. This revolution will be televised...perhaps on YouTube, GoogleVideo, or Yahoo Video.

This coming week will be a week in which we may have a couple of periods a day to uncover cameras, mics, and VCRs that are in the "surplus" (which means broken) room. I think we might be able to use some of them in our quest to make our morning show more student centered. I would like live footage from games, classrooms, and around the school, for either the morning show, or student produced podcasts/videocasts.

We are on the move. Good things are happening. Not much time to slow down.