New Frontiers for 2009

I have several new ideas going for 2009, both on my own and professionally. January through March will be the final sprint towards finishing my National Boards Portfolio, but I'm hoping it won't be an all-consuming endeavor. Here are a few other things I'd like to be working on:

1. Diving into Podcasting, Albeit Slowly

As of yesterday, I have a podcast over at 1ytb.blogspot.com. At my church, we are all reading through the Bible in one year, according to The One Year Bible plan. So, I'm podcasting the readings for each day. I looked around for some podcasts by others doing the same thing, and most of the ones I found were pretty heavy on the commentary. Mine is just straight up Bible passages. So, it's less like a podcast and more like an audio book I guess.

2. Continuing with Web 2.0 Student Use

I'm so proud of my kids at school for really stepping out and trying new things this year! I am able to have a special club of children in each grade level 3rd through 5th, and these guys are awesome. My fourth graders are writing and photographing for their very own news blog called What's Roaring, Tigers? In 2009, my goal is to help them publicize the blog so that we can reach a wider audience and maybe get some comments from people outside our school community.

3. Ironing Out the Snags for Video Editing

Our school was blessed this year to be able to purchase a new digital camcorder. Thus far, my fifth grade club has been producing weekly TV Shows using photographs, clip art, and audio files in Windows Movie Maker. You can see a couple of their shows here. With the new camcorder, we should be able to incorporate some live action as well, which will be exciting. However, Tech Services is having to work with me on being able to download the videos from the camcorder and edit them effectively. Restrictions on the computers are making things a little weird.

2009 should be a great year for new advances for me and for my media program at school. I'm excited to see how it will turn out!