I had my first opportunity to share this year at the 2009 Illinois Education and Technology Conference. My presentation was titled, “Creating a Digital Substitute”.  The presentation was basically about using tools such as Flip Video cameras, MP3 Recorders, myplick.com, Microsoft  MovieMaker, Audacity and a variety of other tools. These tools allow a teacher to leave materials for a substitute teacher to utilize during a planned absence or  a staffing. Other opportunities could be a digital field trip, notes for an absent student or review for science lab setup and notes from class.

The idea of creating a digital substitute is a ultimately a way for the teacher to learn the technologies that eventually they will feel comfortable in sharing these technologies with their students. Two speakers (Charlene Chausis and David Jakes) at the 2007 conference shared that we need to immerse ourselves in these tools/technologies  in order for us to have a comfort level that we can then share these tools with others (students).

I had heard of Web 2.0 but not really used any of the applications. It was a real eye opening experience at the conference to see presenters like David Jakes and Charlene Chausis present about the utilization of Web 2.0 for their careers as well as how it might be utilized in schools for teachers and students.

About 2 weeks has passed since the conference and I have:

• setup a del.icio.us account and show a few others how to do the same (Here are my del.icio.us bookmarks from the conference.)
• setup this blog on edublogs.org
• setup wikis on pbwiki.com and wikispaces.com
• setup a mogulus.com Internet TV channel
• began to utilize Google Apps to collaborate on a Technology and Information Literacy Curriculum for our School District
• setup an account and shared a slideshow presentation by our Superintendent on slideshare.net
• setup google reader to read blogs by Will Richardson and David Warlick

One speaker talked about Will Richardson saying something like “being selfish” with these technologies and learning and using them for yourself before you try to get students to use them for a learning experience. That is what I am trying to do. It has been a motivational builder for me the last couple of weeks to be involved with these technologies.

As I am getting started with Web 2.0, it makes me look at the information on the Internet in a completely different way and the vast opportunities and numerous tools that are available to each of us.