Web2.0 Professional Development

In late June, I led two three-hour professional development sessions for teachers at my school.  One was geared toward teachers in grades 5-12 and the other was geared toward teachers in grades K-4.  Initially I was planning on creating two separate presentations, but then a 2-week trip to Europe changed those plans.  I decided, instead, to create one presentation that would have something for everybody.  I covered all the tools with both groups, but spent more time on different tools for each group and focused on how they could be used differently with each group.  The feedback from both sessions was positive, so I'm glad it worked out!

View presentation here or watch it embedded below.

Web2.0 - grades 5-12 on Prezi

I'm Published!!!

This past April, the high school librarian and I presented at PSLA on Building a Culture of Reading in a school and/or district.

The presentation was a huge success.  Several people e-mailed our principals and superintendent singing our praises about what a great job we do promoting reading!  Another result of the presentation was that someone from School Library Monthly, asked us to write an article for them!

So, later that month we sat down together and sketched out an outline, created a Google Doc, and then collaborated on the article together.

After many, many editing sessions we were ready to submit.  Getting down to our word-count limit was the most difficult task ... we just had so much to say :).  I know we are both proud of the completed article!

Newbie Presenter

This past weekend was my first presentation (other than at school, of course). I was a presenter at the 37th annual Pennsylvania State Librarian's Association Conference.

I'm happy with how the presentation went. There are a few things that I wish I would have done differently in hindsight. I wish I would have taken 5 minutes at the beginning of the presentation to make sure everyone in the audience was able to get to the online portion of my presentation. A few people were having trouble finding the link on the conference wiki. I also wish I would have scheduled about 5 minutes between each application I was talking about to answer a few questions. Oh well, next time I'll try to remember to do those things. Live and learn:)


I began with a short presentation embedded below:


At the end of the presentation, I linked out to a poll by Poll Everywhere. I wanted to get an idea of where everyone in the group was at in terms of using applications like glogster, wordle, audacity, etc.

Then I launched into the content of my presentation using a LiveBinder I created. I absolutely LOVE LiveBinders for presentations because your presentation then becomes a resource binder for those in the audience. My session focused on creating multi-media book projects. I talked to teacher librarians about how to make book projects 2.0-style and allow students to learn important 21st century skills - creative commons, visual literacy, communication, etc.

Book Projects 2.0

It is amazing how a presentation that can take hours upon hours to create and organize, is over in 1 hour and 15 minutes. I wanted more time, but the time I did have was great and the participants were wonderful!

Number 1 photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/2115400318/.

Technology Boot Camp

It is hard to believe that another school year is over. However, unlike the start of many summers, I spent the first two weeks at school. Between participating in our school's technology camp and helping interview candidates for the high school librarian position, my summer vacation was "postponed" for a little over a week. I cannot say anything about the interviews. However, it was an interesting process to be a part of and deciding upon the best candidate for the job is not always an easy task. The technology camp was an exciting endeavor initiated by our two wonderful technology coaches. I like to think of it as a "boot camp" for many of our teachers. It gave them an initiation into the world technology and its uses in the classroom. I think many of them caught the technology bug!

This year our high school participated in the Classrooms for the Future grant. With this grant, the high school hired a classrooms for the future (CFF) coach. The success of the high school caused my superintendent to want to bring on a coach for the middle and elementary schools. Much of what a CFF coach does mirrors and/or supports what librarians do. I was lucky enough to work with two excellent technology coaches, who were always willing to work with me and share ideas. So, I was thrilled when they recruited me to help them with two of the days in the technology camp.

I led a day training teachers how to use Interwrite Pads. I absolutely love my Interwrite pad. Interwrite Pads provide all the functionality of a SmartBoard or a Promethean Board, however, they are mobile. I (and my students) can annotate websites, interact with Word documents, control the computer, and much more from anywhere in the room. Here is the wiki I created for the teachers using Interwrite Pads.

The second day, I led the instruction on podcasting. The teachers used Audacity to create a short podcast. We also talked about how podcasting could be used with students and how to display the students' finished products. This led into further discussion about glogster and nings which led to discussion on all things Web 2.0. I showed them my Web2HowTo wiki and encouraged them to sign up for all the technology camp sessions if they had not already.

The general technology comfort level of the teachers who participated was low. However, they were all open to and excited about learning. As the teachers finished the podcasting session, I left them with a short video that I found on YouTube. I think many of them could identify with the video and it gave them a few laughs.



The technology camp created a forum for teachers to be introduced to, play with, and think about technology and its uses in the classroom. It gave me a forum to interact with many of my teachers at once and discuss new projects to implement with their students using the technologies to which they were introduced. I give a lot of credit to our two technology coaches for initiating, planning, and conducting such a successful camp. I would love to create a "Help Desk" night once a month to build upon this initiative. The idea of after-school sessions for teachers was planted by Kim Corfino's insightful post on PD sessions. To implement a "Help Desk" night once a month would be a great way to provide teachers with the continued support and instruction they will need.

Boots photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/72731134@N00/275276240/