I got a new camera this week.  I bought the Canon Rebel XTi.  It’s been on the market a couple of years, and its successor, the Rebel XSi recently appeared.  I didn’t want to spend all the money on the XSi, plus I need to learn how to use a DSLR.  If you’re looking for good photography tips I recommend going to Digital Photography School.  I really like this site.

My header graphic above is a scene I took at Callaway Gardens.  What a beautiful place it is, especially in the spring!

This is an update for the online meeting software.  I think Vyew is going to win it.  It has more tools and is much faster.  Some of us at work played around with it and found it much better to use than Webhuddle.  Webhuddle is still good, but doesn’t have as many things we need.  It’s also got more of a delay than Vyew.

These are nice little cameras.  They’re not too expensive, and the quality is impressive for the price.  They are so simple to use.  We are going to get a couple of them for out department, and when I showed it to the school improvement director she said to order her some as well.  They just plugin to a USB port and no software to install.  Kinda neat if I must say so myself.

Flip Video Camera

I’ve had a lot of fun over the last couple of days.  I’m worn out at the end of the day, but it’s a good feeling.  I’ve been helping a high school social studies teacher integrate technology in her world history classes.  I created a wiki on wikispaces where I put their assignments along with links to help them in their searches.  I created a custom search for Google on the French Revolution and the students are creating Powerpoint presentations from their research.  Baby steps yes, but big ‘ol steps in the right direction!!  I even bought a flip video camera.  If you don’t have one of these you need to check it out.  Not too expensive and pretty good quality if I must say so myself.  I’ve let the students video each other and play around with the camera.  They seem to be enjoying their assignment.  They are working collaboratively and doing a really good job of it.  I’m proud of them.

Need an eBook?  This site has free audio downloads of classic books.  You can even download the text of the book and store it on your iPod in notebook form so you can read the text as the audio is playing.