speaking engagements?

My highlight of the day: being asked to present on Web 2.0 as a teaching tool during a monthly meeting of local school technology administrators. Humbling indeed, and very cool as well! Looking forward to that...meanwhile, I've been busy planning and foraging for content for my inservice class I'll be teaching to staff at the end of this month. The topics will include blogs, podcasts, wikis, social media (aka Web 2.0). I already have a few things in mind to share, but if any of you out there know of a particularly cool site, app or tool, leave a comment and I'd be forever in your debt!

reflection

Earlier this week, while I was teaching my Culture of the 60's class and showing a YouTube video on my SmartBoard, one of my students said to me, "Can you imagine teaching without that thing?"(referring to the SmartBoard).
I paused for a minute and thought: no, I can't imagine it. And yet, I did it for 12.5 of the 15 years that I've been teaching. I taught for years without powerpoint, YouTube, taking my students directly to a webpage, then following links; without email, LiveJournal, blogs, wikis, turnitin.com, social networks...so much of the stuff I do now I never was able to do, and yet I still managed to run a class. It blows my mind how much technology and web 2.0 specifically has altered the way I deliver instruction. And of course, I needed one of my students to point that out to me.

Wow.

class social networks: thoughts?

Last night I made a major decision to move my discussion board for my Theater class from wikispaces to a new page I created on ning. Don't get me wrong, I think wikispaces is a truly great thing; the possibilities are limitless, but the truth is that it really doesn't serve our needs at this moment (maybe one day soon it will?). I don't currently have plans to have my students make pages on the wiki, nor do I have the time to shift my entire online presence for the class from my blogger blog (where i's been living for about four years) to the wiki site. As for the discussion board, which was the only feature I was really using: I felt that the setup was far too limiting and there weren't enough management options for me as the moderator. I had also seen it get to the point where the initial novelty had worn off, and the students were no longer as inclined to post as they had been.
So, I found that the whole concept of an online social network for the students in the class was much more appealing, and I could do a lot more with the page as well as manage the forums more effectively. The notion of being able to create a profile and add pics, music and video (like facebook) seemed to be much more appealing to students, so I thought I'd give it a go. The hardest part now, I'm sure, will be actually getting everyone to sign up...