Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Summer is here!!

photo by APDK via Flickr
Well it has been a week since the kids have left school, a few days since I left school for the summer and already, I am sunburned (from the Braves afternoon game I went to today) and have yet to put a toe in our neighborhood pool (but it does look promising for a pool day tomorrow!) but my exciting summer news is that I am teaching/facilitating an online web 2.0 class this summer.

This web 2.0 journey started earlier this year when my Assistant Principal asked me to come in and explain podcasting to her - when I started going on and on about podcasting, blogs, wikis - she called me a geek and told me that I needed to teach her what I was talking about. It got me thinking to the original 23 things course by Helene Blowers. As I did a little more research I came across Shelley Paul's awesome adaptation for schools, called K12 Learning 2.o. I came up with the idea that I could take these two courses and tweak them a little for our specific school community (after getting permission from the original course facilitators). My administration loved the idea and told me I could offer it to our teachers as a summer course worth 2 PLU's. I expected to get a few people interested, I would have been happy with 5 people, but to my surprise, I now have THIRTEEN teachers taking the class this summer!

We started last week and today I had my first three students start their blogs (and they look great!) This is an online course, but since it is offered just to teachers in my school I will be available for tutoring sessions, either in person or remotely by phone/email or google chat. If this goes well I am hoping I can offer it to media specialists in our county and other teachers at our school.

Of course, as with most of the things I take on, it took me a lot more time to get everything up and running, but I think that (or hope that) the people who are taking the course get something out of it and at the very least, be more comfortable using technology in their classroom.

Well, it is time to do one of my favorite summer activities - watch 2 hours of So You Think You Can Dance with my daughter!





Happy Summer!!

5 comments:

teacherninja said...

Sounds excellent. Can't wait to hear how it goes. And yes, the pool is niiice.

Kym Crosby said...

I'm totally addicted. Completely. The problem here is that I've discovered the possibilities are virtually endless--which just puts me on search of "how do I do this?" and "What if I tried this?"... good thing I'm a geek!! :)
Thanks, Kathy!

S. Everett said...

I am loving the ideas and the endless people willing to help and put the time in... I can't wait.. I love the online part of it... it is now just finding the time and finding the computers that will allow me to use all functions needed to complete the task! Technology... a love hate relationship! I can't wait to see where this takes us!

S. Everett said...

Loving the possibilbilities and the endless number of people willing to help make them possible... technology and I... a love hate relationship!

S. Everett said...

Loving this already! Can't get enough and wanting more! Now just to find the person who will have the time to make it all happen for me!