Resources – 24/7

As a result of yesterday’s post, I had a couple of conversations with people I used to work with.  We were laughing at some of the presentations that I had done which were I think cutting edge at the time, are now pretty dated.

I used to do 2-3 workshops a week after school and had a constant flow of people showing up.  We were a big district and there always was an interest to learn and do more.  As I reflect back on it, it was an amazing group of professionals who would show up unpaid just to learn some new things about the use of technology in the classroom.

In the beginning, the handouts were distributed on paper.  Creating the handout was a fine skill between attacking forests and getting the message across.  Fortunately, connectivity won out and eventually everything went electronic.  The neat thing about that was that I could correct mistakes without anyone noticing it, they were available 24/7 for anyone who wanted them, they could be used directly with students or other colleagues, and you could still snag the resources if you were unable to attend.  All of these were a big win for me.

The resources, since they were available freely on the web, were available to anyone who needed them.  (To use or make fun of…)  It was nice to run into people at conferences who indicated that they had used things.  It was a great opportunity for sharing.  Perhaps one of the neater things was to be noticed by Education World and be part of this article – “Unique Resource Sites for Educators“.

In fact, it got to the point where I put everything online.  It was there for the taking.  Actually, the stuff is still there, if you know how to get to it although some of it is in dire need of updating.   I don’t have access anymore so it won’t.  But, I did manage to take a copy of the content and put the relevant things online at this Google Site and my PD Wiki.  I think of all the efforts that were put into supporting report card implementation and was quite happy to NOT include it.  I had even created a Google Custom Search to look through all the resources to find something!

Quite frankly, most of my learning these days gets archived either here on the blog or in my Diigo account.  Packrati.us has been my best of friends to streamline things.

One of the things that we know about effective learning is that it’s most powerful when you teach others.  These were the tools that I used and there’s nothing like creating a resource to make you know your topic inside and out.  Many of my learning friends created their own wiki(s) or Google site(s) to customise it for their purposes.

Their resources are available 24/7 as well.  Isn’t it great when we can all learn and share together?