For the past few days, I’ve been in beautiful Sedona, Arizona to attend and present to a group of early childhood educators from Arizona and New Mexico as part of the Southwest Institute Summer Literacy Institute.

Southwest Institute for Families and Children (SWI) is a non-profit research and development organization focusing on children’s health and education.

Below you will find the slidedeck from my presentation to this dedicated group of early childhood educators, many of whom serve high-poverty children and families from the Navajo nation.

Remember listservs? I guess people still use them, but they really seem so 1990’s to me. Regardless, I’m still on a couple different listservs, and from time to time, there IS good information that comes through the barrage of emails that fill my inbox. Very often, the people who are emailing the listserv are looking for help, assistance and/or answers to their questions. I can appreciate this. Occasionally, I take time to write a decent email and respond back to those questions. I hate doing it though. I wish these listserv people would move their “conversations” to a more open forum, like Twitter, a Facebook group, or possibly even Google+, but many of them are not ready for that, or just not interested. I hope that changes.

Until then, I have very little choice in how I add my voice to the conversation other than writing an email back to the listserv. I took that rather antiquated approach to professional learning and sharing this morning when I wrote a decent email to the people in the NAEYC Technology & Young Children Interest Forum about how I am using iOS devices with young children to take photos and videos. Upon completion, I thought that the information the email contained might be valuable to people outside the listserv, so I’m sharing it here.

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Jennifer Johnson and Carol Kliesen are second grade classroom teachers at Spoede Elementary School in the Ladue School District in St. Louis, Missouri. I had the opportunity to attend their session, “Liven Up Learning – iPods and Classroom Blogs” at METC 2010 and find out how they are using iPods and blogging in their classrooms. From the conference planner:

Liven up learning by using simple tools like iPods and blogging applications. Students independently use iPods to learn new material, review important concepts, and extend learning. Students use communication and collaborative skills as they create blogs that engage and empower them to integrate technology skills as they become 21st Century learners.

Below are my notes, in tweet format, from their very informative session. Thanks for sharing Jennifer and Carol!

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