Yesterday, I helped to lead a professional development day with teachers at Ruth Fox Elementary School in North Branch, MI. The MSU PD Team, lead by Doug Hartman, has been working with the teachers at Ruth Fox for a year and a half to support their strategic integration of technology in their pedagogical practice. In that time, the teachers have moved SO far in their thinking about and with technology.

We always try to push their thinking when we meet so yesterday, I introduced the idea of using HootCourse in the classroom. All day, teachers tweeted their thoughts and, in the end, I think the backchannel permitted teachers to voice questions that might otherwise have been lost in the structure of the day. I also used it as a place to re-state what had happened — a sort of running archive of the major ideas from the day. Having just reviewed the ad-hoc transcript now, it was more edifying than I thought it might have been. How great to have those “in-the-moment” thoughts captured and available for review so readily.

I also introduced the idea of the Personal Learning Network as a way for teachers to sustain the amazing learning they’ve done. Check out the web resources I created for these topics.

HootCourse
Personal Learning Networks

Thanks to Paul Morsink, Doug Hartman, Penny Thompson, Anne Wood and Amber White — it’s such an honour to work with each of you.