A colleague of mine and I will be presenting a session on using technology to increase your professional and personal productivity to a large group of principals at the SCASA middle level conference in a few weeks. I am a “heavy” user of technology and know how beneficial it has been to me over the past few years.
The group will have a very wide range of technological backgrounds. Some of the principals are proficient in many technologies and some have very limited experience. I want to somehow appeal t each and everyone n the audience. The presentation will be about two hours.
What should we include in our presentation? I know I would like to start off with a poll everywhere demonstration. Here are some ideas we have so far:
poll everywhere
twitter - for developing a PLN and for school communication
podcasting
What do you think we should include?
Comments
I would also include:
Wordle.net and wallwisher.com
Here is one I did with my staff:
http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/3995171
I have used wordle before-thanks for jotting my memory. Wallwisher looks great. I have never used it before, but will definitely add it to the presentation.
Principals should be blogging and using a wiki. Those are the first two concepts I teach in my own principal workshop. I believe that understanding blogging gives the neophyte techie the best start to understanding the Web 2.0. Then, you need to teach RSS and aggregators.
There is so much. You need a few days, not hours!!
I would focus on making the available tools (as mentioned above) not only useful to those in your session, but also sustainable.
Is it realistic that they will RSS 15 blogs and actively follow them? If they start a blog are they likely to maintain it over an extended period? Are they likely to start a Wiki with their staff only to find it relatively empty?
Ask the questions: What can these tools do for you? What is missing from your practice as an educator? and What are you going to stop doing in order to do these things?
My 2 cents.
Frank.
I am biased, but the greatest podcast can be found here:
http://lunchtimeleaders.podbean.com
Also a good alternative to twitter is plurk. Very different and not as intimidating as twitter.
