What I Learned Yesterday

To put a cap on the end of the day yesterday, I threw out a Tweet indicating that it was a great day of learning and I was headed home.  It was a long day.  I was in place before 6:00am and didn’t leave for home until after 6:30pm.  Throw in travel time to get to and from and it does add up.

Anyway, to my surprise, I had a number of people twitter back asking what I had learned.  What a nice surprise so I figure … hey, why not use that as a basis for a post this morning.

It’s kind of difficult to know where to start and since I was facilitating and not notetaking, this is probably all out of order but, hey, here goes.  As it normally does, a discussion of standardized testing sneaked its way into things and I visualized how it might work.  After all, that’s the top down model.  Wish I had my hands on a computer at the time as I could have created this Crappy Graph.

So, I guess I was the person with the edict for today because I drew up the agenda.  Now, I know all of the folks that were there and some were part of this group for a few years so the reality was that it looked more like

which suited me fine because I was there for the learning too.

So, here’s what I learned…

• agendas are nice and give you a sense that you have a plan when you think like the first image but get quickly ignored when your reality is the second image.  But, hey, we were accountable – we had an agenda.
• I wasn’t the only person who worked my way through high school as a lifeguard, instructor and examiner for the Royal Life Saving Society;
• when people with laptops need power, they pull out anything that’s currently plugged in to save their bacon.  Mental note – pack power bars in the future;
• we’re doing all right.  One of our members signed up to take a course online and felt that it was pretty low level compared to his abilities;
• we’re doing better than all right.  I sat next to a member who had directories and directories of personally crafted notebooks.  When you’re this good, nothing but your own personally crafted resources will do;
• this group was on the same page as me.  We want to use video but we want it embedded in a lesson so that it is truly seamless;
• kindergarten teachers continually amaze me; we embeded video and then extracted scenes to teach sequencing and retelling;
• I’m starting to use the phrase “SMART Boards are not today’s version of a drive-in theatre” too much (actually, let me amend that.  It’s a message that needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated);
• the quiet one (at least when I’m around) creates some amazing things;
• data projectors don’t run forever;
• we’re going to do a read-a-thon event between two classrooms using Adobe Connect;
• the “new guy” didn’t follow my advice and is now paying the price;
• there are far more wikis running around this board than I ever dreamed possible.  And, they’re being used for collaboration although we don’t use that word;
• I’m not a real blogger because Will Richardson says … wait until I talk to that guy next week;
• I need to check my calendar more often so I don’t drive from Windsor to Essex for my 4 o’clock workshop only to find out that the workshop is indeed in Windsor;
• there are 14 minutes of idling time on Huron Church according to my GPS if you hit all the red lights rushing back to Windsor;
• I now know that there are some people with amazingly high end cameras;
• not everyone knows the difference between Cottam and Comber;
• we’ve got some more movies ready to roll with the RCA Small Wonders;
• the appropriate codecs aren’t installed on all computers;
• there are incredible teacher professionals that will turn out from 4-6 after a long day of work for a PD session;
• our original team is very cohesive – the quiet one couldn’t join us but checked in last night to find out what she missed;
• we had some shared learning by exploring a 3D environment by folks sight unseen and they did a great job;
• the group is increasing their role of evangelists for the cause – people are now flying in for sessions;
• it’s great to work together and walk away with product and inspiration.

That’s a quick summary of what comes to mind at present.  If I recall other things, I’ll add them.  It was an awesome day of learning for me and I hope for the others in the group.

Social Bookmarks:

Powered by ScribeFire.

Advertisement