2007 has been a whirlwind year for me. My learning journey has never moved so rapidly. My job title changed from Tech Facilitator for Differentiated Learning to Instructional Technology Specialist and my job responsibilities changed from being team focused to whole district. Our district is in the process of writing a curriculum. We have never had one before so this has been a huge paradigm shift. We also now have a new tech director who has a vision of our future that is very exciting to me, hopefully his progress won't be slowed down by bureaucratic red tape. I believe that between our curriculum director, leads, new tech director, tech savy superintendent and myself that we are finally heading in the right direction technology wise. It's a very dynamic time to be in education and I think we are finally going to start participating in it instead of just standing on the sidelines saying our kids can't do this, our teachers can't do this, our administrators can't do this....etc.
There are so many new things I was introduced to this year. Therefore this blog entry will be broken into three 4 month segments. I hope you will join me on what was a most excellent adventure.
In January new to me was the "buzz" about Web 2.0 tools. I had heard the term bantered about in conversation but I didn't truly understand what it was all about. I started to investigate, this sounded important.
One of the tools that I discovered early in the year (Feb) was Skrbl. Skrbl is an easy to use collaborative whiteboard. It's a great way to collaborate with people in other locations. I used it in several presentations I did to get people to participate in projects anonymously. No one knew who was doing the editing just that it was someone in our group unless they wanted to be identified.
Moving into March I discovered PhotoBucket which has become a place that I do a lot of image editing, hosting and resizing. There are many new tools here that I haven't had time to play with because of all the "new" sites that keep popping up in my learning.
April led me to the most time consuming and yet rewarding find of all. Second Life. Second Life is a virtual world created entirely by the users. It is a constantly changing environment with a plethora of possibilities for education. I am only a part of the Main Grid, but I know there are amazing things happening on the Teen Grid in schools now. This discovery also led me to becoming a part of an amazing team, the Discovery Education Network in SL Leadership Council. I am the Co-Chair of the building team. In world I am JessieMarie Flanagan known as JM. The DEN-SL offers FREE teacher workshops in world every Wed night. We also host a variety of events throughout the year. If you are interested in checking out SL let me know and I would be happy to hold your hand while navigating through this immense amazing place.
In May, Will Richardson ignited my love of blogging and I learned to use an aggregator.
My choice is Google Reader because it links into my iGoogle which shows up as my home page with all my links to other gadgets and gizmos...well you get the picture. I started this blog the day I took the workshop from Will Richardson, but then I failed to keep up with it. Partially because I spend so much time reading blogs and commenting on them from my Google Reader and partially because I "forgot" about it.
One of my goals for this year is to start writing more regularly and try to build up some readership. This will be tough for me as I feel like everyone else has already said what I wanted to but just didn't know how. I get stuck on what topics will strike a cord with people and get them talking. I want to be a part of the conversation not just a listener on the sidelines.
Please join me later in the week for part 2 of my excellent adventure. : )
~Anne
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