Web 2.0, The Faculty Meeting- Let the Games Begin!

My personal goal for the year is to expose as many teachers to as many web 2.0 tools that I can. I will use this blog to chronicle my efforts and, hopefully, share more successes than failures. My ultimate motivation is to have the teachers use the technology, reflect on it, and find ways to implement them into their classrooms.

We started our journey in the opening faculty meeting of the year. We began with (actually we began with pretty dry administrivial housekeeping, after that) a version of Karl Fisch's Did You Know? as a conversation starter. It seemed to have gone fairly well; as well as can be expected considering it was the first day teachers reported to school. The following day they were booked for all-day district lead professional development, and the students showed up the day after that. As you can imagine they were chomping at the bit to get to their classrooms. I didn't hear any outwardly negative comments, so I'll say it was a success.

Video sharing down, too much to mention to go! If anyone has any similar stories or ideas for other tools, please let me know...

Tags: faculty meetings, tools, video sharing, web20

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Comment by Britt Gow on September 21, 2008 at 5:46pm: Hi Brian,
At our Prep to Year 12 school (260 students) in Victoria, Australia, we have come a long way in the past nine months. Two very talented and web 2.0 savvy teachers started with the students - by setting up each student with a blog and using flat classrooms to collaborate with schools in other countries. The enthusiasm of students has been infectious, and brought along many of the other teachers, to find out what is going on.
One of the best innovations has been "Walk-in-walk-out-Wednesdays", when teachers can come along when they need help with any aspect of the technology and we usually find a way to do it. I think this aspect of learning to use the technology, to do something you want it to do, when you want to do it, is most important. Not just using the technology for the sake of it.
Please don't take offence, but surely your ultimate goal is to improve student learning and having teachers use web 2.0 can be one way to achieve that. My suggestion is to find out what your teachers are doing already (starting with what they already know) and enhance that by using technology to motivate students, make collaboration quicker and more convenient or to provide for different learning styles.
Best of luck with your journey, Britt Gow.

Comment by Brian Carter on September 29, 2008 at 11:04pm: @ Britt Gow-Thank you for your insight. Obviously the ultimate goal is to impact student learning, not use technology, or cooperative learning activities, or alternative assessments, etc. just for the sake of it. Being in my current district for just over a year now I have a good handle on what teachers are currently using, we also have two major initiatives on the table now that teachers are most preoccupied with. Our school is a high school grades 9-12 with over 1400 students, we have more students in one grade level than you do your entire school and I'm sure over 7X the staff as well, that makes implementing change much more difficult. By putting the technology in their hands and showing them the benefit of it gives them the option of using it, or not. If they choose to use it, THEY CHOOSE TO USE IT. If it is their choice, they are more likely to invest the time to make it work.

Our ultimate goal is to get students and staff collaborating world wide. Before we flatten the world, however, we need to flatten our school building. We're getting there. Thanks again!