Today I did 9 hours of Professional Development. My 60 minute drive began by listening to a great podcast with Jon Udell interviewing Gardner Campbell. Worth a listen. The morning and afternoon I spent showing about 25 teachers how to use Joomla to manage their websites. Pretty traditional PD. Lots of step by step technical support. Necessary but pretty boring. I did...

I had two interesting and challenging experiences the last couple of days. Experiences that cause me to consider my approach to supporting teachers and students. I met with a small group of high school teachers who wanted to learn more about Web 2.0 and what they might be able to use in their classrooms. I was fully prepared to spend the day showing demos, and...

Today was a disaster on many levels. My colleague and I have been asked to support schools in developing their school websites, we decided to use Joomla and special component called Multi-Site Manager to help look after 40 some schools. While good intentioned and some success, we’ve faced a few issues that while not totally catastrophic have been frustrating...

One of my favorite quotations to share during conference presentations and workshops, whose source I unfortunately do not know how to properly attribute, is the following: Are you preparing students for their future, or for your past? Missing from this quotation is the idea we also need to prepare students for the PRESENT that is taking place right now, and not just...

This is my presentation from the TLT/IT Summit 2007 in Saskatoon. It was a great treat to meet Kelly and John whom I’ve conversed with online but was glad to meet in person. Here are the slides. (Embedding was not working) [tags]rss,tltsummit2007,shareski[/tags] Listen Now  Listen...

I’m sitting in a conference session as I write this realizing, I can’t take it anymore. Presentations that don’t engage are no longer tolerable. I believe technology is an amplifier. The fact that I have a laptop in my hands certainly easily distracts me. When I look at others in the room, I see some focused but others looking at program...