Saturday

When most teachers hear the phrase: "in service or staff development" the general reaction is deep, heavy sighing, rolling of the eyes or worse. The visual and audio effects are greater if you add "on Saturday" to the above! I was 'invited' to a technology workshop held today. The lure: a fellow blogger was going to be one of the presenters. OK, I was intrigued and went to the website to sign up. Once at the appropriate class description, I noticed that I was to be compensated for my participation. THAT was incentive enough for me to get up on a Saturday with weather that was inviting me to stay under the covers and hibernate.

To sum up my day ~ IT ROCKED!!! I would have almost paid them for what I learned:

• Podcasting - The Basics
• Using Live Video
• Power Point Meets Video Maker
• Blogging in a Social Studies Setting

My only criticism ~ not enough time as each session was 1.5 hours long. I could have used three hours on the video maker and live video classes. I will try it out on my own but it is nice to have live help when doing these activities for the first couple of tries.

Today flew by; I wasn't exhausted at the end of the day. I, as well as my colleagues, was fully engaged in my learning, the way it should be for our students.

The frosting on the cake was meeting a fellow blogger and being able to put a face to the name. He conducted his session well and apologized for having to "machine gun" through our session. We were his last group and there was a mix up on the time it was to end. I hope I didn't prattle on too long and take up his time since he had to drive back to Austin.

If you couldn't tell, I am pumped up!!!

Next on the agenda: I am going to finally purchase an I-POD! Thirty or eighty gig???

~butterfly angel~ (thawed out)