How time flies by! I have to apologize for not adding to the blog every week. I'm still trying to get in the habit of using it. With all the wonderful developments in technology it would be great if we could figure out a way to add some extra time to our days or at least reduce work somewhere else! It's just becoming impossible to keep up with all the tasks we all have to do each day. I've been very busy with all my classes creating their iMovies about themselves. They are making progress ever so slowly. We are now working on adding images & video of pictures of family & friends from home as well as learning to use the digital sill cameras & the Flip video cameras to record around school. Students are learning in small groups about proper procedure & policies for camera use. This includes proper downloading of images/footage and getting it to their iMovies and deleting from their cameras. The students will then reinforce their newly acquired knowledge/skills by teaching their classmates.

In addition to the Flip cameras coming in, Gail & I were finally able to get to Best Buy to purchase our items with our grant we won last year! Yippee!! So, now I have a new all-in-one printer/copier/scanner which we'll be able to use for kids to scan any photos in to their files. (My old scanners don't connect to the new Macs & most weren't working anymore too.) Not all of our kids have digital cameras or cell phones to take pictures. Plus, I encourage them to bring in any older photos of their parents, grandparents, etc so they can get them digitized. This is part of my genealogy interests I've acquired from my Mom.

In using all the new Mac applications and the new equipment, I am barely able to keep ahead of the kids right now! Next on the agenda, is learning all the ins and outs of iDVD for the kids to then turn their movie in to a DVD. After that, time allowing, I hope to have them design their own DVD covers in iPages. Needless to say, they are very excited about all of this! By now though, my students are well-grounded in creating Garage Band music loops, iPhoto slideshows, editing images in iPhoto, photographing and videotaping themselves in Photo Booth and importing all in to their iMovie. They know how to add titles, transitions, video & sound effects, and import their music loop for background music. They know how to access the Video Tutorials to use whenever they need more help. And they usually show me something new every day too! So, we are having lots of fun while we're working hard every day!