Summer Break Begins...Now.
Chanatown’s seen some tumbleweed roll through and the single post in June is really starting to gather some dust. Well, the end of the school year brought joy and relief to many teachers, but for this Technology Integration Specialist, it meant a whirlwind of responsibility from working with classrooms on final projects to setting up summer school teachers with technology tools. The pinnacle of activity came in the form of a four-day series of technology training workshops that we offered to our teachers. With the exception of a SMART Board training led by our partner at COTG, and an assistive technology workshop led by another specialist, each 2-hour session was organized and facilitated by yours truly. They included:
- Document Camera (Beginner) – Take the Doc Cam, Leave the Overhead
- Google Apps (Beginner) – Entering the World of Cloud Computing
- Google Apps (Intermediate) – We’ve Gone Google in My Classroom. What’s Next?
- More Media in the Classroom (Featuring Discovery Education Streaming and VoiceThread)
- Clickers (Beginner) – Checking for Understanding
- Teacher Websites (Beginner) – What Works, What Doesn’t, What to Do?
- Teacher Websites (Intermediate) – Maintaining and Improving a Teacher Website
- Web 2.0 Tools - "Top Tech" Quickfire Challenge
I was pleased with the turnout of the sessions, and workshop feedback data indicated the attendees were also satisfied with the presentations.
For more information on the above workshops, please visit our registration form or my events page. If you are interesting in having me present at your school or organization, please click on Services in the tabs seen above.
Next up: 2011 ISTE
It’s off to Philadelphia for the 2011 ISTE Conference, and the first workshop I’ll be attending focuses on using the NETS standards in the planning and implementation of technology professional development. I’m registered for several more including “Technology Time Savers,” “Maximizing WhiteBoard Usage,” and two on using VoiceThread in the classroom. On the social end, I’m looking forward to ongoing networking with colleagues at the ICE party, following a volunteer shift at the Google Booth, and finally, a Google reception at the National Academy of the Sciences, all on Monday evening.
In the past, I’ve taken notes using Evernote (which I still use and love), but as was the case for ICE 2011, I only managed to get a single post that shared my reflections. I’m going to attempt to “live blog” my experience at ISTE this year using Cover It Live. I’m hoping this will not only help me collect my thoughts in the moment, but also make available any useful nuggets of knowledge that I’m sure to uncover over the course of the next five days.
Once ISTE ends, I’ll hit the draft queue, as I’ve collected dozens of post ideas over the past few months with no time to write them up. Although I don’t expect to replicate my efforts from last summer when I made a consecutive post for over two months, I do plan on stepping up my efforts when compared to recent months. Here’s to an exciting summer of teaching and learning technology.
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