Obstacles being overcome...

Things this semester have certainly smoothed out!  YouTube access has been granted and the tutorials on the class Google Site can be reviewed and utilized as needed. Students have already told me they prefer the freedom of choosing when to access the information to listening to a class lecture (however fascinating I can be!).

Smooth sailing -- a picture of peace underway!

I wrote another grant to afford EasyBib Pro. It is small with strong instructional reasoning to support the use so I fully expect to have it for next semester. Several students who have been through the paper version and the digital transition will still be in the course for their last semester as middle school students. They will be the defining line about the usefulness of this tool!

We've also discovered a picture capturing tool, Awesome Screenshot, that does the work of Jing/Screencast. It has already been put to good use for the student doing the Google Treends/Sickle Cell project.

AND, a big bonus -- the students have begun to keep the GALE database link, Library of Congress, favorite peer blogs to watch, Citation Machine, and my blog* on their blogs as links. That has made their blogs more of a command central for their projects.

It's becoming smoother sailing!



*my blog -- Every semester I do a research project along with the students to model the steps. i write posts about the lessons, document my questions and path of research. The recent semesters the projects have been bobbleheads, Follow the Drinking Gourd (where I built a gourd ukelele), and figs as a farm market product.  This way, if they get stuck about how to explain a lesson, they can review my blog and follow the example.