It was an interesting thing to stumble upon your blog when I was looking at student blogs from somewhere in Maine! I recognized your name right away as you left a comment with encouragement and suggestions on my blog over a year ago when I had just started it after a helpful PLC get-together at Peacock. I was teaching in Coronach at the time, but have moved since then. I have to say that starting that blog was just the beginning then, but more recently I’ve started taking the blog and related tasks and challenging myself with them, finding new ways to make them more useful and engaging for students. At the last school I was at, they were really turned onto it and it became a very prominent teaching tool for me. I’ve just started at another school and am still waiting to see how they react, but the amount of “technology in [my] classroom” is growing and I think I’m being careful with it. I’ll admit I am nervous in this new school and hope the families and students find it a positive thing and there is no (or little) negative. (Some people get nervous with new things, and, after reading a few posts, I see you’ve faced a bit of the negative challenges too.)

I wanted to reconnect, just so you could be encouraged that someone who started out in this direction came from your school division, but I have a question of you that I’m hoping you can give advise on.

I see that you embed a lot of youtube videos as well, but how on earth do you get them to play without those annoying “related videos” popping up after it’s finished playing? Sometimes, the related videos are okay and acceptable, but on more occasions than not they are inappropriate material that I don’t want accessible through my website. I notice that you’re on a different blog provider. I would prefer to stay with wordpress, as I am comfortable and really enjoy the look and functions provided. Is there any plug in or something that prevents the extra videos from coming, or possibly something to program on the youtube side of things?

I’m glad I came across your blog site. That’s an interesting idea, to print out your blog. lol I appreciate the photo of it.

Marcy Waldner
waldner.edublogs.org