Wednesday, June 22, 2011

PD in my PJs - an online organisation webinar for teachers!

I love this PD in your PJ thing!!! I have just participated in an awesome SimpleK12 webinar on keeping oneself organised as a teacher using online tools, by Kyle Pace. Some of the tools he mentioned I already know about and use, but there were some great new ideas. This is a very abbreviated summary of Kyle’s talk.

kyle


FILE MANAGEMENT
He spoke about Dropbox, Google Docs, and Evernote. I use all three and love them!

WEB RESOURCES
a) He spoke about Diigo (my favourite).  I think I must try and follow Kyle Pace on Diigo. When he showed us how it worked he had some amazing looking resources!
b) He mentioned Livebinders. This a lot like One Note in its layout. He gave us the web address of his collection on Using Livescribe in the classroom. The address is: http://bit.ly/livebindersexample. I saw a nice one there on the LiveBinders site on Ipads in Schools by Mike someone.
c) The third tool he looked at was Bridge url (http://bridgeurl.com).   Using this site you list like tools together and it saves them as a group.
 d) Google Chrome. Apparently Google Chrome syncs on all your computers. It has great educational apps and also great extensions. To learn more about Google Chrome apps he gave this address: http://bit.ly/ericSchromeextensions - a useful blog post.

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 STUDENT WORK AND SOCIAL LEARNINGThese are sites that can be used for social collaboration amongst students in a class. I haven’t tried any of them…YET!
a)    Edmodo.comb)     Collaboriseclassroom.com (Kimberley from SimpleK12 mentioned at this point that they have a past webinar on this application for people to listen to. These are stored at http://simpleK12.com/webinars).
c)     Sophia.org

 KEEPING UP WITH CONFERENCES ON TWITTERI liked the sound of this.  Kyle mentioned that Iste is starting next week and we can keep up with it on the following hashtag #iste11. He also mentioned other conference tags - #rscon3 and #blc11.

 UTILITIESHere he mentioned:
1)      Bit.ly.com to reduce website addresses
2)     Readability.com to cut adverts etc out of online reading matter.
3)     Viewpure.com to cut advertising clutter out of videos.
4)     Google Forms to do polls etc. He showed how amazing Google Forms is for this and how it translates the findings in Google Docs.

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Well, this was a very worthwhile webinar and it all happened in my PJs. There was someone else from South Africa attending, from Joburg – Bronwyn D! She must have also been in her PJs! She has just followed me on Twitter! I tried something new as well – I recorded using Audacity while the webinar was going and saved it as an MP3 recording.
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7 comments:

  1. janet thomsonJune 23, 2011 at 2:41 AM

    Fantastic stuff Fiona. What strikes me most about the range of tools and social networking tools in particular that you are engaged with - is the generous spirit in which you take the time and trouble to share your learnings with the rest of us.

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  2. DezlinJune 23, 2011 at 4:32 AM

    Absolutely brilliant! Thanks for being such a stellar PD person and sharing your joutney of growth! Big love! :-)

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  3. Mrs WilsonJune 23, 2011 at 7:24 AM

    Hi

    It's been 8 years since I left South Africa, so looking at your blog makes me homesick! I wonder if you read this terrific blog:
    http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

    Enjoy!

    Mrs Wilson

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  4. KimberlyJune 23, 2011 at 10:29 AM

    Hi Fiona,

    This is a great summary of yesterday's webinar - I've followed you on Twitter as well, I'm @TLC_edu

    Thanks so much for sharing and I hope to see you at another webinar soon!

    Kimberly Warrner
    Community Manager @SimpleK12

    PS - I also noticed there was someone else from South Africa & glad you found each other on Twitter - we definitely need to do a Twitter roll next time so we can all follow each other more easily!

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  5. Karen StadlerJune 23, 2011 at 5:24 PM

    Fiona, I have also used a number these tools and others not. Thanks for the webinar summary - now I have more tools to try! See you in JHB!

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  6. Carolyn KnightJune 30, 2011 at 12:34 AM

    Hi Fiona,
    How are you? I haven't looked at your blog for a while but this item took my eye when I checked it today. I'm studying online for a Masters of Information Studies and I can relate to your title 'PD in my PJs'. Our online classes use audio and text so it doesn't really matter if I'm wearing my PJs or my old gardening clothes! I'm studying fulltime and just doing the odd bit of teaching so the Livewires blog is inactive. But I am learning such a lot about technology & library science, and I'm enjoying the change of lifestyle. I am still blogging but using my own blog now instead of a class one. You look as though you are going from strength to strength with your all of your technology integration with education. Good on you.

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  7. Maren RogackiJuly 13, 2012 at 9:42 PM

    Fantastic goods from you, man. I've understand your stuff previous to and you're just too excellent. I really like what you have acquired here, really like what you are saying and the way in which you say it. You make it enjoyable and you still take care of to keep it wise. I cant wait to read much more from you. This is actually a great site.

    ReplyDelete

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