Ced0550: Week Three - Facilitating

I'm starting to feel a bit like some of my students feel when I introduce new material. Sometimes I think I expect my students to catch on too quickly, or I forget that just because I have taught something for five years doesn't mean that my students have heard it for five years. To them, it's new. A version of this is happening to me in our class. The challenge these next few weeks is to use Elluminate to prepare a 15 minute lesson on a topic of choice. I like my topic and think it applies to many teachers. I want to share/explore policies that allow all students, regardless of age, to take advantaged of some of the great Web 2.0 tools. My topic stems from the challenges I've faced with some websites requiring an age limitation in order to register. The best example I've come across is Bibme.org, a free bibliography-creating website. It's perfect for my students - very useful and easy to learn. In order to register, however, students are supposed to be 13 years old. That's a problem for my 5th and 6th graders. So I want to discuss some ideas of getting around this dilemma. Thus, the choice and creation of a lesson won't be too difficult. Actually presenting it, however, could be the real challenge. I've messed around a bit with Elluminate, but I have to be honest in admitting that I'm not quite ready to take charge. I'm feeling a bit confused by the whole process. Perhaps once I watch someone's example, I'll be able to get mine together. I think it's just interesting how much of a hands on thing technology is. One really has to be willing to jump in and wade through the unknown. Thank goodness I've come a long way in this and now am not so frightened by things I haven't tried before. I'm also thankful that by now I've created enough connection with others to bounce ideas off off them and have some of my doubts and questions answered.