Trial Run -- Visit to Calcedeaver Elementary

A group of us set out at 5:00 a.m. on Friday, November 17, headed south to Calcedeaver Elementary. Felicia and Nicole had invited us down to attend their annual Culture Festival and what a wonderful time we had. Our Project has now begun! We had barely gotten out of our car after a very long ride when Nicole announced her friends from Vestavia Hills were helping with the judging of some of the young female students dancing to the drums! They didn't keep us on the judging circuit very long; I thnk we thoroughly messed up probably since we had no idea what we were judging! However, we had so much fun trying. Perhaps another year they will try us again and we will now know a little better what we are supposed to be looking for in these very creative dances and steps they were performing. We do have lots of colorful video tape and many pictures to share! Dr. Morton, our State Superintendent of Education, and other dignitaries from around the state were visiting this wonderful festival as well, and Nicole and Felicia really rolled out the red carpet for all of us. We had the best time folks and I encourage each of you to take the time to visit Mt. Vernon and Calcedeaver! It is absolutely amazing what these folks have done, it is a wonderful school, and the spirit is so alive there. We have a renewed excitement now about our project, thanks to this wonderful experience.

Enjoy these few pictures I am posting.....









Our team will be using all the information we gathered in completing several podcast with interviews some of our group had with different participants, and an iMovie project with the video and music to share with students here at our school. Our advanced team project, while striving toward the final goal of an Innovative Teacher Forum for Alabama, includes research with problem solving techniques and fact finding leading to a writing project using technology. We will explore the Indian culture and the history of Calcedeaver Elementary with our students and sometime this year have their group come visit and perform for us.

Trial Run Today Using Skypecast

We had a trial run today with a Skypecast! One of our third grade classes took part in a skypecast with a group in New Hampshire with one of my newest, dearest friends I met in Seattle and we are really planning some super neat things together! We were honored today to have Dr. Ash, our State Assistant Superintendent of Education come visit to see what we were doing. In she walked and we were in the middle of a skypecast with Nicole and her group in New Hampshire. Today was a trial for our skypecast planned with Nicole in New Hampshire, Mary and her class in Massachusetts, and our group in China. It went great. The students loved it and our topic today was weather since that is what they have just finished in class. You of course would guess the number one question our third graders had was "does it snow" and how does it look? Both groups loved it and can't wait for next week when we do another skypecast. We did learn that we will have our webcams connected and we must get our necessary "parts" installed that have just come in to correct bandwidth problems with are experiencing with our server. While Dr. Ash seemed to be very into this and I think she really enjoyed it, we were able to iron our some problems during all of this! Our Assistant Principal shared with Dr. Ash our project and she loved that and expects to certainly be a part of bringing an Innovative Teacher Forum to Alabama! Yahoo, the more we have to buy into this the more successful we will be! Alabama will be on the map folks!! I am rambling but so excited that we know this part of our project is going to work and excited about our trial run on a skypecast. If you have not used skype yet, please download it, it is free, and it opens up the world to our classrooms! Connecting classrooms around the world is my new motto!