My #ECOO13 Session

One of the joys of presenting at a conference is being able to share your thoughts about something that you are passionate about.  For me, it’s about ongoing personal professional learning.  I believe that it is essential if you are to grow and mature as a educator.  I also believe that it’s never over.

In my opinion, you can do it daily by setting aside part of the day for professional reading.  Fortunately, in the social realm, you don’t have to go it alone.  You can learn with the best of them just by staying connected.  While it’s possible to just go along for the ride, it becomes even more important when you’re an active participant in the process.  In my presentation, I shared the value to me and also spent some time sharing how I do it.

I am also a firm believer of levering technology, whenever possible.  I have found a combination of inquiry, reading, learning, cloud interactions that have served me well.  There, in a nutshell, is my presentation.  I created this graphic to highlight the main points and expanded on them throughout the presentation.

I don’t create speaker notes in advance of my presentations.  I’ve seen so many people who do that and end up using them as crib sheets throughout the presentation.  How many times have you seen people read from a sheet of paper or, even worse, from their presentaton slides?

In my case, I have the presentation in my mind and use the slidedeck as a memory jog as I present.  In that way, the only thing I’m looking at is the audience.  Post presentation, I will sit down and formalize my thoughts just in case I get to do the presentation again!

I have included a link to my presentation in the ECOO13 Lanyrd site and it’s posted on my Professional Development Wiki.  It’s there that I have expanded on my thoughts.  You’re welcome to visit the Social Reading link at http://dougpete.pbworks.com.

I had a nice group attend my session.  It was interesting because so many of them have had interactions with me on Twitter daily and, most certainly, they are a good group by themselves for a #FollowFriday!  I know that my co-chair for the conference thought I was nuts offering to do a session but it was a great 45 minutes.  Only my problems to solve!