I have been been following the Tuesday cohort bloggers and am impressed with the creativity, diligence and great writing that I see. How you all get that done with your hectic work schedules and busy personal lives is amazing.
Our most precious resource these days is time and we never seem to have enough of it. I am struggling with finding new ways to connect with media specialists to have the really deep discussions that the PLC groups are having within the schools across the district. Given the number of meetings and the size and diverse schedules of our media peeps, it is difficult to find a time when we can meet and have deep discussions on issues that affect our work life with students. We are trying Elluminate this week, but even distance learning takes time in the schedule and that seems to be what is most lacking. So much to learn, moving so fast, when do we get to go deep or don't we?
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Movin' on down the road....
Web 2.0 has only been on my radar screen a little over 18 months and I can't believe all I have absorbed in that time. Jean and I have decided to try using Delicious to bring together resources for media specialists into a space that is easily accessible 24/7. We created several MPSMedia tags organized by grade levels: MPSMediak-2; MPSMedia3-5; MPSMedia6-8; MPSMedia9-12 and MPSMediaPro for materials and resources that cut across grade levels and also speak to our professional needs like information literacy and collection development. We will be presenting this again at our District Wide Staff Development Day to get more people on board.
I also learned how to make these tags "feed" to my "Delicious" IGoogle page for quick checks to see if more things are being added.
Since media people have such hectic schedules and we have so many different school hours it is difficult to get people together for face-to-face professional development. Our monthly Curriculum Connect pd seemed to be attracting the same people. So this past week we looked at Elluminate, a web conferencing tool that we have owned for several years but which has been underutilized in the district. An added bonus is the recording feature which enables one to create archives of the pd for later access. This seems like an especially good way to create pd around applications like Destiny and the recorded sessions can then be accessed for review or by persons new to the appication.
In preparation for the Elluminate session with a district mentor, I attended online pd the previous day that happened to be powered by Elluminate. It seemed fairly user friendly and easy to navigate. Not only did I gain experience with Elluminate, but I was also introduced to several new Web 2.0 tools as well as the astounding resources of TeachersFirst resources, especially TeachersFirstEdge which contains lists of Web 2.0 tools for teachers, annotated and reviewed by teachers as well as some general useage tips for Web 2.0 in the classroom.
Thank heavens for Delicious and tagging. Once you use it, you don't know how you organized without it!
Until next time.......
I also learned how to make these tags "feed" to my "Delicious" IGoogle page for quick checks to see if more things are being added.
Since media people have such hectic schedules and we have so many different school hours it is difficult to get people together for face-to-face professional development. Our monthly Curriculum Connect pd seemed to be attracting the same people. So this past week we looked at Elluminate, a web conferencing tool that we have owned for several years but which has been underutilized in the district. An added bonus is the recording feature which enables one to create archives of the pd for later access. This seems like an especially good way to create pd around applications like Destiny and the recorded sessions can then be accessed for review or by persons new to the appication.
In preparation for the Elluminate session with a district mentor, I attended online pd the previous day that happened to be powered by Elluminate. It seemed fairly user friendly and easy to navigate. Not only did I gain experience with Elluminate, but I was also introduced to several new Web 2.0 tools as well as the astounding resources of TeachersFirst resources, especially TeachersFirstEdge which contains lists of Web 2.0 tools for teachers, annotated and reviewed by teachers as well as some general useage tips for Web 2.0 in the classroom.
Thank heavens for Delicious and tagging. Once you use it, you don't know how you organized without it!
Until next time.......
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