Technology in Early Education: Virtual Visit Giveaway!

Technology Advances: Virtual-Visits

Welcome to June! Summer is just around the corner. For many of our readers, summer is a time of planning and rejuvenation. Others continue to march along -- from another hemisphere, just midway into their school year or from job descriptions that provide care for children year round. WELCOME!

Whatever your role. Thanks for your continued readership here. Our little umbrella expands. We have a lot to celebrate. We now have 1000+ followers. A delightful milestone for certain. So let's celebrate! 
It's time for a BIG Giveaway!

A lot can happen in a month's time! At the urging of 'Miss Barbara' I gave my first "Virtual Visit" as an author/illustrator, music-lady. INCREDIBLE. Barbara became familiar with my music, while teaching in Chicago. She is now teaching on the Virgin Islands(!!) I am certainly willing to go to her directly, but alas budgets did not exist for such a brainstorm............ drumroll. 

"Let's use technology to connect the dots!" Not as good as hugs in person and walking on the beach on her island, but making eye contact and singing together ~~ albeit through a screen ~~ was a brilliant second choice and a fun adventure. 

Now look what's happened since that initial experiment. 

"Time 4 Kindergarten" hosts a 'Virtual Visit' with Debbie Clement

I did some brain-storming with a network of 'Kinderland' bloggers and asked for volunteers to help me gain experience in cyber school visits. I've had an amazing whirlwind introduction to virtual visiting. My guinea pigs BFF blogger-buddies provided the perfect 'test-drive' among friends. I've been all OVER the country in these last couple weeks.

In the last 3 weeks I have made 9 additional 'virtual-visits' to classrooms and multi-purpose rooms from Oregon to Maine and Michigan to Texas, with stops in Missouri, Nevada and California. My cyber-school visit to Oklahoma was the day after the tornados. Being able to offer some up-beat fun in the midst of the sorrow was a way to pay-it-forward. 
I'm HOOKED! 


On my own blog, "RainbowsWithinReach" I have just created a 'tab-at-the-top' for this concept. Within the tab I have the blog articles written by my guinea pigs willing friends, that include little video clips of the fun, and all kinds of insight into connecting the dots.

I'm new to Rafflecopter, but will use it as the vehicle to manage the celebration for my increasing technological ability and our collaboration here hitting 1000 followers! You have a week to enter. Follow the breadcrumbs and like me here and there and everywhere for additional chances to win. 

****The winner will receive a gift certificate, {valid for 12 months} to redeem for their very own, cyber-school visit. My virtual visits have been averaging 40 minutes. Having a projection screen has been necessary for the internet interaction. The required entry is your leaving a comment below with your email so I can contact you in the event of your winning. 

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Now for some other goodies for my sharing this month. I just this minute published an 'encyclopedia' on the importance of rhyme as part of the KBN (Kid Blogger Network) Top 10 Series. HUGE number of resources!!!  
MEGA MEGA MEGA SUPERLATIVE. 

Here's an article with some clever end-of-year ideas from my concluding the year on-site Author school visits this year.  

Seeing all of the various ideas  during my school visits, motivated me to write my own little sentiment that I then captured at Picmonkey and translated into a FREEBIE pdf Printable. My poem will always be free at our cyber-store mall, the Early Education Emporium. Just pop over there to download. 

If you're still in EOY [end-of-year] mode, I know you'll appreciate my RoundUP of ideas garnered last year in this article, too. 

This is the month of June!

It's time to turn our attention to all of the daddy-men in our lives.

Here's a RoundUP of Father's Day Festivities: poem, card and bulletin board idea. 

Earlier this week I had an on-site school visit to an elementary building of only K+1st grade. 

Talk about Excellence-in-Education!

I took hundreds of photos in our brief morning together.

Here's a glimpse into Heidi Feskanin's classroom.  

The wall-to-wall bulletin board took my breath away, as Heidi had directed her kinders to create the art in response to my song "You're Wonderful" which was to be part of their EOY serenade for parents. How fun that the kinder-kiddos got to meet the author in person and share their own creativity! 

[Heidi's incredible room prompted me to create the tag: 'classroom crashing' on my blog and now I have to cull through past articles to get other incredible rooms categorized. I have a few already in the category. I know how much you enjoy looking at the rooms of others.] 

The 5 runner ups in our Rafflecopter Giveaway will receive the digital files of 
"You're Wonderful" 

as their thank you gift. 

The file includes two Mp3s: a sung version and an instrumental, 
a sign language chart and the music notation. 

Don't worry if you're already on summer hiatus, 
this classic song of mine,
would be perfect to launch your new year on the horizon! 

-- Debbie -- 

If it's June that means the official COUNTDOWN to Vegas has begun in earnest. I have 45 days until my OPENING KEYNOTE for the international gathering of the kindergarten brethren at the Venetian. 

If you're coming, you'll see many of my Kinderland bloggers join me on stage for my opening number! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway