Talk about a great opportunity. Once I got past how different I look with a ponytail and glasses vs. a more professional wardrobe (Amy didn't recognize me in her session LOL), I couldn't believe the amount of useful information that I found from the two days here. Yesterday's BYOL (Bring your own laptop) session with Jung and Amy was fantastic. We learned methods of dissecting a simple article by switching hats and speaking from the hat, not us. Also Amy gave us some great websites to check out and verify. Most of the teachers in the workshop with me left feeling more confident using websites in their classrooms. I actually gained an idea from another teacher, I plan on giving my students a "research project" on the North American Tree Octopus... I want to see how long it takes for them to discover that it's a hoax.
Day two was spent in the Web 2.0 toolbelt workshop with Lisa Thumann. Great workshop. I decided to expand my wildcard project using Screencast-O-Matic which I plan on showing other teachers how to create a video using screencast-o-matic AND Windows MovieMaker to put together several informational videos with transitions that they could use for students and/or professional development opportunities.
Thanks so much for the suggestion! I loved the workshop! Oh and lunch was good too..... that's important when you are eating for two!
I would have loved to have come! My work schedule is really heavy this week. Someone goofed the scheduling though, and we had to redo everything. We decided to go with full year (we are on block scheduling) for Freshmen at risk students. Unfortunately, we didn't plan for the extra three English classes. (instead of teaching six classes per year, one teacher only has three). What did this do? This kept me with 5 classes for the year, almost a full-time teaching position. This would be highly unfortunate for me as they already took a full time position (literacy specialist) and added technology integrationist (also full time). This didn't really leave me with enough time to teach a full load of classes! So what happened? Emergency meetings. Thank god for dually certified special ed teachers! We were also working on our professional learning teams and our project based learning. I did get a lot done. Next week I will be out of town, so it was really important to get this done now. Glad you had fun!
ReplyDeleteWow- speak from the hats- Gotta know what that was all about.
ReplyDeleteMichelle,
ReplyDeleteI will post the link to the hats under useful links on bb. Basically Jung game our class an article in which we were to read the first paragraph. When she asked us to discuss the article, of course no one spoke up. Then came the hats. We had to put on a specific color, based on how we were going to comment, ie give facts, give our feelings or opinion, play devils advocate to the information given, and so on. People more comfortably discussed the paragraph that was read. Jung stated if you commented in a way that someone didn't like you could say, "It's not me... it's the hat"