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).

As I explore more and more of the technologies that are available on the Internet and the impact that these tools have on my education. The more, I realize the impact that these tools can and will have on K-12 education.

Keep learning more and sharing more,
chris

The annotations at the bottom of this entry are what I had highlighted using diigo toolbar on the OpenPD website. The “Topics” was a highlight and the “Welcome” was another highlight.

I will be participating for the first time this afternoon in OpenPD. I will share my thoughts and ideas about OpenPD at a later time.

OpenPD meets the next 5 or 6 Wednesdays at 4 pm Central Time.

Keep Learning and Sharing,

chris

—-Content below automagically generated from diigo—–

openpd » home Annotated

tags: Draper, OpenPD, PD, professionaldevelopment

• Open Professional Development Welcome to our collaborative space for this open staff development course. – post by chriswherley

Topics
Why Open PD?
Why Social?
Wikis
Google Tools
Yahoo Tools
Blogging
Social Networking

Welcome to our collaborative space for this open staff development course. We encourage all of you to utilize any and all resources posted here, use the discussion tabs to ask questions, post suggestions, and engage in conversation together throughout the course.

Mon – Holiday
Tues – Sick
Wed – Work
Thu – Tech Plan Reviewer Camp
Friday – Presentation about LSTA Grant In Sync with Technology at RPLS

The Presentation today was at Rolling Prairie Library System and presented by Karen Egan, LSTA grant consultant with the Illinois State Library. Those in attendance were employees of RPLS and member school librarians and member public librarians and me, school technology coordinator. I was there with our District Librarian.

A couple of them had been to ICE in St. Charles and where talking about Vicki Davis and nings and wikis and blogs. Most all of the librarians were wanting to do more with Library 2.0 for their patrons but each had their own set of limitations, whether it be hardware, software, and/or support from teachers, administrators, or even their tech people.

There is definitely an excitement around the Web 2.0 technology tools available.

I look forward to the grant process and working with our District Librarian on future projects.

I created the presentation, “Web 2.0 Show and Tell” in Google Docs. Our school is  experimenting with the Google Apps Education Edition for email, word processing, spreadsheets, and slideshows. As of today or yesterday, Google Apps also has “Sites” which looks like wikis and a way for individuals to create webpages.

Web 2.0 Show and Tell on myplick.com using slideshow from Google Apps and audio from Gcast.com

• Create a title slide.
• Create the question slide.
• Duplicate the slide and put the answer on it.
• Repeat the process until you have enough flashcards.

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.