I Am In The Current ~ The stream is digital.

My book club has completed it’s study of the 7 Keys to Comprehension by Suzan Zimmerman and Chryse Hutchins.

We met twice other then our introductory meeting. The first two session were held at the Saskatoon Public  board office and the third was changed to one of the participants home-school. I was able to book room 3304 where a projector and large screen was available to facilitate my two original Keynotes created for the introductory and first session.

The introductory session had the best attendance. By the final session attendance was below 50% of the registered attendees. I attribute poor attendance to seasonal scheduling conflicts and poor weather conditions. My original intent for scheduling my book club at the downtown office was to offer participants a central location to which to travel as it is centrally located in Saskatoon. In hind site, I should have acknowledged that downtown Saskatoon is very congested after school and makes travelling difficult. Later, I learned that some past book clubs have scheduled their sessions at coffee shops to allow participants to have something warm do eat or drink should they desire. This is something I would seriously consider for future book clubs. After teaching all day, people would appreciate something to allow them to unwind prior to commencing professional development.

Things I really appreciated about this book club was revisting key concepts in this book with colleagues and sharing ideas, experiences, tips, and strategies. Our book club was very lucky to have a member of the Sasktoon Public School’s Literacy Team sign up for our book club and to share valuable information with the group. This was really powerful because participants were able to hear a similar message from somebody else during the book club session. This reminded me of past experiences of offering my Web 2.0 and usessions. Many of my participants were new to Education Technology tools and the most powerful moments for them were Skype calls with other networked teachers who reinforced my message.

I think the one thing I will always remember about this book club experience is the participant who attendent all three sessions. This teacher diligently read and referenced sections of the book that were important to her and that could inform her classroom instruction. What was really marking was the powerful personal stories she shared about her growth as a reader, her willingness to admit moments of frustration and proud to share stories of her moments of growth as a reader. The one message I share in my session when working with this book is that everybody can become a better reader, even a parent or the classroom teacher.  Her contributions marked our book club sessions.

As a point of interests:

When preparing myself for the final session of the book club I looked around online for content from other sessions. When you google “The 7 Keys to Comprehension” you can find a copy of slides that were used by one of the author of the book for a parent session in Ottawa. 

I will be offering (pending approval) a Bluebook session (internal PD) to all staff at the Regina Board of Education this year. I hope to offer 6 sessions, one a month until the end of the 2007-2008 school year.

The title of my presentation is “Web 2.0 and u- The Networked Teacher”. The second part of my title is new and was inspired from Alec Couros’s dissertation that can be found here.

Image taken from: http://tinyurl.com/ysbae5

During discussions with people from my network, I have gathered that it is hard to “guess” what tools people are interested in using. Let’s face it, there is a lot of choices out there. (I strongly recommend you take a look at this TED presentation by Barry Schwartz regarding choices.)  People have told me that often they are frustrated because session attendees rarely use the tools that they are presented once they leave. I have tried to circumvent this by preparing an interactive workshop that introduces teachers to these tools, however, there is no one tool that is showcased during the presentation. Rather, attendees are shown how to join networks that will empower and support them with whichever tool or tools they decide to use. This way, participants will come in contact with good examples for inspiration/models and people who can help them when in need.

For my presentation I have made a Powerpoint presentation with Keynote (that can be found and downloaded here) and have created a wiki to serve as a road map for the presentation. Both the Powerpoint and the wiki can be found here.

Now to be approved…

I write this post moments after reading a twit regarding edublogs. I have wanted to blog and have had the opportunity stifled by edublogs being down- time and time again. Even as I write this, I have an error code embedded with my page. I have had worpress.com recommended to me. What to do?

I think I have just lived two of the craziest weeks of my life. Once again, I have lived more firsts. One of the most rewarding was having Kyle Lichtenwald call in on skype and spend a few minutes chatting with teachers at my school. This took place during the second session of my Web 2.0 and u workshop. You know what they say, it’s good that they hear it from someone else. The conversation turned out to be very fruitful as my colleagues had really relevant questions and comments. That workshop was a real treat. Kyle and Cami joined our group from the ustream.tv broadcast. It was nice to have them with us and to finally broadcast something with that tool. Should I have recorded it and kept it on the network?

Session 1 of the reading seminar has wrapped up. What to change? What to keep? I had a broad range of feedback from colleagues who volunteered time to facilitate the sessions. I even had one parent come back for the second run of the first session. Each night had it’s highlights and I still hate Powerpoint. I am also embarrassed that I settled on that tool for my presentation. I did have a video interview embedded to try and break up the presentation. I had way too many slides. I tried to keep them in jot note format to reinforce my verbal message. I did consider Dean Shareski’s video Design Matters when I prepared my presentation. Even thought I used a lame visual tool, I felt it was important to consider Dean’s message even in this context. I wanted to broadcast with ustream.tv but I didn’t think of it in time and didn’t check with my administrator. Maybe for our January presentation. I wonder what kind of viewer ship I might get.

Oh, and I love the new mac.

Here is a copy of the email I sent to the members of my interactive work group. The session is called Web 2.0 and u. I was able to watch Dean broadcast something similar from Bengough, SK this past week.

Friday’s session will begin with a short review of what we have seen to date. If it is the will of those present, we could continue to familiarize ourselves with those tools.

Afterwards, I think it would be most useful if we chose a certain strand of web 2.0 and worked specifically with it. I am asking for some feedback regarding what would be most useful to you. We will then operate within the confines of the tyranny of the majority model. Please reply indicating which option your would like to pursue:

Option 1: Blogging
Option 2: Wikis
Option 3: Digital Storytelling
Option 4: Digital Soundscapes
Option 5: Podcasts and Video casts
Option 6: RSS

We will be looking at Social Bookmarking together to end our session. This is a powerful tool that will allow for great collaboration between our local school members.

I think we should uStream this session. It will be my first uStream ever. I am anticipating that the number of viewers will be 0. Prove me wrong network!