These are blogs and wikis our staff use:

If you need an introduction to blogging, you may want to watch this video from Common Craft that explains blogging in very simple terms. Our principal, Linda Rawlings, made this presentation on 21st Century Skills last year to members of the school board, parent organizations, and teacher groups on campus. The presentation is web viewable through Producer at this link: 21st Century Schools presentation. Blogs used in our parent, teachers, student planning groups: Vision Committee - Last year a group of parents, teachers, students, technology, and library staff worked together to find the vision for our campus. The blog contains the discussions we engaged in online.

Community Committee - This committee discussed in the Vision committee meetings how the business, college, and community can interact better with the high school.

Campus Site Visit Committee - subcommittee of Vision - looking into various campuses to visit for 21st Century Skills and to develop a cohort of shared resources

21st Century Schools - analyzed and discussed the research about 21st Century Skills and Schools.

Staff Blogs and Staff Development Blogs

Not So Distant Future - WHS Librarian and blog celebrity posts about new technology resources, curriculum trends, and all things education. You can also find her on Twitter as Technolibrarian. Tumblr - Campus Technology Coordinator Joel Adkins posts interesting commentary, pictures, videos, and quotes about the media and Web 2.0 tools for teachers and students on his page. He is also on Twitter as mrjadkins.

Project Technology - Last year, Carolyn and Joel provided weekly staff training before and after school for staff. The resources are posted on this blog.

Teacher Blogs and Online Resources:

WHS Career Tech - BCIS Teacher Vicky Abney leads her students through ongoing commentary and conversation. Debora Orrick - 9th grade English Pre-AP I and a 10th grade English II teacher, Debora Orrick uses multiple blogs in her classes for students to discuss the many things they are reading. Bob Witowski - Algebra I teacher used Gabcast to record an audio lesson. Gabcast allows you to create a podcast using your cell phone as the recording agent. The site then converts the recording into streaming audio. Bob also completed a project using cell phones in the classroom. Students were tasked with finding someone to figure out a problem in their address book. Students texted the problem to someone and had to teach them how to answer the problem. Responses came from all over Texas with some coming from oversees.

The Tools we Use:

Edublogs - Our free online blogging community that allows us to create and manage our blog sites

Del.icio.us - Global bookmark sharing system where you can post your favorites, view what others post as their favorites, and find more bookmarks by topic. Gabcast - Record a podcast using your cell phone. Simply create an account and call in your podcast. Gabcast converts it into a web-streaming audio file you can embed into your website.

WetPaint - This site is running off a WetPaint wiki. A wiki is different from a blog in that it allows multiple people the same rights to add and manipulate the content of the site. Its very easy to use. Plus, you can petition them to have ads removed from your wiki by informing them that your site is an education site. This is a huge plus!