What's been keeping me busy

I want to take this post to share with you some of the projects I've been working on around the Internet with the hope that some may interest you.

These would not be possible without teachers who are always looking to learn.

First up is #Comments4Kids. This is a project started by a few dedicated teachers on Twitter: Wm Chamberlain, Carey Pohanka, Derek Smith, and Jarrod Lamshed. Here's how it works: students write blog posts and teachers tweet out links to the posts and tag those tweets with the hashtag  #comments4kids. The hashtag makes it easier to search for all links about a specific topic.

Piggybacking off of #Comments4Kids is my classroom blog. Our blog would have floundered this year if it wasn't for #Comments4Kids. That sounds dramatic, but it's true. As I've told my kids from the start of the year, the purpose for them posting their essays on our blog is to get their writing out to an authentic audience. Without #Comments4Kids and all of the generous people who have left comments we would not have had an audience. As of today, we have two comments from members of my students families. (I know because I authorize every comment that gets posted.) That is 2 out of more than 500. I'd estimate that around a quarter of the 500 are from my students commenting to their classmates. The other 350+ are from other students, teachers, and college students who only know us from our blog! If you have time, my kids love getting comments.

I've also started podcasting with my brother-in-law and fellow edublogger Matt Townsley. We call our podcast With Students In Mind. We've only published one podcast so far, but the we plan on having a specific structure for each ~30 minute adventure. We'll start by discussing one thing you can learn. The first podcast we talked about URL shorteners. Next time it's Diigo. Then, we'll take one a topic in education from two perspectives. We're still working the kinks out on that segment. We'll be looking at the issue of student responsibility and at what age do we up the ante on autonomy. We end each podcast with three minute gut checks. Matt and I each get three minutes to answer a previously unknown question from the other person. We have fun, and we hope you'll take a listen.

The last project is something I'm doing on my own, but it was inspired by a bunch of other learners in my PLN. Dean Shareski wrote a blog post titled "The year in Photography." Dean is one of many teachers who do some spin on a "365" project. Dean showcases one picture each day of the year of the many he takes. I've always wanted to do something to push my creativity, but I don't have a camera that I trust. Luckily, my parents just bought us a Kodak Zi8 pocket camcorder for our baby that's coming in a few weeks. I decided to do my own spin on the 365 project: 365vids. I'm taking 1 video each day. The creative part is that the length of the video (in seconds) will match up with the date of the month. The first day of the month, the video will be one second long and so on. You can find those on my posterous blog under the tag 365vids.

I hope you've been inspired to join in or start up a project of your own. It can be as easy as leaving some #comments4kids or as challenging as a 365 project.