Teacher Challenge - a great site for PD

Over the past week or so I have been reading some of the entries in this "30 tools in 30 days" column from the Teacher Challenge blog. What a cool way to introduce 30 cool web 2.0 tools for teachers to learn about! This site is introducing a new web 2.0 tool each day in a simple and concise way that may help a lot of teachers get to feel more confident in their knowledge of some of the tools that are available to them at no cost.

What I like about the format of the 25 entries so far is that they have a simple format for each entry which shows you what the tool is, how to use it and has both the link to the site to register for your account and some suggestions for further use.

What tools are there so far?

plus #24 "Wikipedia" and today's #25 "Jog the Web".

While there aren't many that I haven't used or known about (a couple of these are new to me) - it is great to see ideas of how other people are using some of my favourite tools. Livebinders has been on my list to use for some time now since I created my first one ages ago and haven't been back since!



 Jog the Web and Wetoku are both new to me. And I am wondering if Little Bird Tales might be something I can use with my own 4 and 5 yr olds at home for a bit of father/kids time? 

If you have yet to try some of these tools, then you will find this site a source of great fun - both for you and your students. There is a lot here - easily 30 weeks of PD for those who have yet to experience any of these fantastic tools.

Enjoy the site!

K12 Online Conference - not long now!

Now the dates for this are Nov 30 – Dec 17, but don’t panic – on the 30th one keynote talk gets posted, and you’ve got a week to watch it. Then over the 2 subsequent weeks a series of other videocasts/podcasts/ presentations are posted – and you can pick and choose how you want to watch/listen.


The rough schedule for what is on and which weeks is here http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=389 and you can watch the stuff either on the site here http://k12onlineconference.org/ or on the ning site here http://k12online.ning.com// [If you are not a ning member, sign up. This social networking tool is used by vast numbers of educators and students world wide – it is like facebook or bebo, only seems to have found a niche with educators].

If you want, you can gain a teaser of previous years k12 conferences – another power of the web is that the 2006, 2007 and 2008 conferences are still available here http://k12onlineconference.org// - just use the navigation on the rhs

Note that many/most of these presentations are available as a download – I generally download the iPod version and watch them on either my Ipod or iTunes on my laptop.

You gotta love the web – so many options...

Great Resources for Educators II

Continuing to highlight useful stuff where I find it ... this month 2 sites from NZ that are worth viewing no matter where you are in the world. Derek Wenmoth and Andrew Churches are educators who share good stories and ideas.

Derek Wenmoth's blog is a resource that will get you thinking about what you do and why you do it in your classrooms and schools. Derek is the Director of e-Learning for CORE Education in NZ. He's been a teacher and principal so knows the hard stuff. His interest and ability in questioning practice for the 21st Century is what brings me to his blog regularly. Here's an example of what you'll find with Derek - this is a reflection on a day spent with a group of teachers from a few schools sharing their learning - a great example of the power of web 2.0 stuff for sharing ideas. Having just read Scott McLeod's latest on why we still don't get it right with PD (amongst others), this entry is a little refreshing providing concrete examples of what does seem to work for staff PD.

Just where Andrew gets all his time to both write his blog entries and update his Edorigami wiki site is a mystery. Andrew Churches is just prolific. He talks from the heart in a lot of his blog stuff, but also deals with the practical side of using ICT in class. I've recommended to plenty of people that they read Andrew's stuff - he makes a real positive difference to what we do in this ICT and use in class.

In particular, on Andrew's wiki you'll find a host of resources for integrating ICT in all areas of the curriculum, but Andrew has a passion for connecting higher order thinking to his work, so if you are a Bloom's person, you'll find some great stuff here.

So, thanks Derek and Andrew. Keep up the great work.