Staff Development

Saturday's class was a great one to start with, "Celebrating with Successful Technology Staff Development". Gained a number of ideas on how to jazz up and spark interest in training sessions for teachers and administrators. A key is the marketing and creating themed trainings. One idea was to create invitations; Reserved seating, boarding passes, 'tickets' etc. Another is to have "field trips" for teachers or administrators. Arm each with a digital camera, bus or car pool them to a location and set them loose on a theme of their choosing. Then reconnect back at the building offering one or more software based labs for the participants to explore using the photos that they took during the field trip. Some great sites explored were:

http://vistaprint.com Create cards, brochures etc.
http://www.dumpr.net/ Creates different effects on uploaded digital pictures
http://bighugelabs.com/

As with any online resource, please check the site first before allowing students to access. Some have ads, and others may not flow through your school's filtering software.

In addition to training teachers and students to utilize online tools and other software for educational purposes, this session also addressed the need for Internet Safety training for all levels of users. Some of the recommended resources were:

iSafe http://www.isafe.org excellent training program for teachers and staff, as well as a program for student peer teaching and mentoring.

Internet Safety Resources http//www.internet-safety.org

Safekids.com http://www.safekids.com

Watch for a complete listing of sites and resources in various categories which will be posted in the next few days.

NECC 2009 Around the Corner

I am looking forward to heading to NECC 2009 this weekend. Educators, innovators and vendors from around the country and around the world will be converging to view the latest technology and instructional methods. When signing up for sessions, the Web 2.0 options were the ones that filled first. Everyone is looking for economical ways to appropriately weave technology into daily learning. During NECC 2007 in Atlanta, I attended several 2.0 sessions, so I have some items to share in that area already. This year I am focusing on the global learning sessions, as well as inventive ways to use PDAs, and cell phones as learning tools. The plan is to Blog and share what I learn with you. I hope to also use a Flip video recorder to bring those who cannot attend, closer to the action.