October Reflections

Our October sessions were jam packed with hands-on technology learning. Again I had a combination of feelings of exhilaration about the possibilities but tempered by the cruel facts of the present technology restrictions in place at my district. Along with having the opportunity to be in a smaller group while investigating the various technologies, there were some great ideas for how to use the tools. I especially enjoyed getting more familiar with Googledocs. I am hoping that although much of the open source tools are not available at the present time to the teachers at our school, will be able to encourage them to use Googledocs to make their work easier. I know that Delicious would also be helpful for them. I am beginning to think I should focus most of my technology leadership on assisting the teachers to become more productive. That will lead to more comfort and willingness to try other ideas with classes as they become available.

During the weekend I was able to participate in or learn more about podcasting, Googledocs, Skype, Screencast-o-matic, VoiceThread, Scratch, Audacity, Pixlr, Kidcast, SurveyMonkey and too many more to list here. Hamline podcasting 101 is going to be a very valuable resource to share with my teachers.

When I returned to my school one of the first things I did was share the survey I created on SurveyMonkey. We decided to use it as a place to start in our school technology planning.