New School Year Update

I worked this morning with my supervising principal, and the Dean of our special education department to get my schedule straight. I will be doing the Precision Teaching gig half time (3 periods per cycle; 2 on one day, and 1 on another). I have one block of Functional Academics the last period of the day every other day.
That left 3 periods... Imagine my surprise when my principal said that he, our Dean, and head principal were thinking about having me create materials and work with other teachers to integrate technology within the special education department!! I will get to spend one block, every other day, doing that exact thing.
I think it was here a few days ago (or not, as I don't see it) that I said that I didn't know of any jobs that would let me work with students, give me time to create materials, and attend conferences. I am totally happy to settle for 2 out of 3 of those, especially since I will get to attend a conference this year!
I am already looking at ways to make this work... I had thought about working with our AT person on another grant opportunity, as well as submitting a continuation grant (This Is My Life: Kicked Up!) to the Loudoun Educational Foundation (LEF). LEF was the organization that provided the grant for our digital camera project (This Is My Life: Using Digital Media To Increase Literacy Skills) in the 2006-2007 school year. We haven't decided yet, but we're looking at either podcasting or video as the addition to the project this year.
I've also been talking about my own ideas for this year, and some of the other teachers were interested.
One of the goals for my school this year is to increase the use of data collection to determine outcomes for students. I think that we could make our lives a little easier for some types of data collection if we use Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis and photo sharing. The students could respond to various prompts in blogs, thus allowing us to collect running writing samples for the whole year. They could post materials created on their wiki, and demonstrate all kinds of skills this way, and with photo sharing. Teachers benefit, because they could literally look at student work ANYWHERE, and not have to lug home 80 folders full of writing.
We may also use a wiki and blog to communicate information about Key Club to members. I offered to give space over at my classroom blog, and also on the classroom wiki.
Lastly, but certainly not least, we have received all the information from Microsoft for the Innovative Teacher Forums. I just set up my personal space on the Forum, and linked back here, and to my professional wiki.