Well, the nerves have cleared now and the day is done.
The morning started off well at a fantastic, newly built school called Murton Community Primary School (or 'The Ribbon' as it's known locally). Their resources are phenomenal. Loads of iMacs, Dell notebooks & plasma screens instead of whiteboards.
I started off with twitter, displaying the fantastic response from my PLN and their tips as to why you should use twitter. The staff were all geared up to signing up, when twitter reported being 'over capacity'.. grrr! Still, most people said they would go away and sign up. A fantastic response about the generosity with which the people I know on twitter share. Thank you, for convincing others of how beneficial it can be.
We then looked at primarypad. A great piece of kit, I'm sure you'll all agree. I went down the road of explaining that technology - however fancy - needs to be used in the correct context, in a structured and beneficial way. There's no point using it when a piece of paper will do the job more effectively. That seemed to get their attention. Eh? Isn't this guy all about tech? Why's he not telling us we have to use it?
I like the idea of thinking clever, not thinking lots.
After showing the staff twitter & primarypad - both of which went down really well, the unthinkable happened. At 10:30, a mere 1hr into my day, the servers crashed. Completely.
We took an early break. In my head I was repeating various obscenities & wondering whether the staff there would want to come back afterwards. They did. Luckily, my blagging abilities came into their own and we talked about various things that I would be showing them (if the server fixed itself...), StoryBird, VoiceThread, Learning Logs, Blogging & I talked about how I use it - For an hour and a half. After lunch, which was lovely, we were told the problem wouldn't be resolved today, but a school 20 mins away had a room we could use. The problem was, there wasn't enough tech for them to be interactive (which was one of the main points of the day). I felt that the staff there were receptive though, understanding that we had to make the best of it.
After a whistle stop tour of blogging, a look at storybird & voicethread we finished early. I'd have kept it going for longer if they were able to participate, but I get conscious of how tedious it can be to simply listening to someone at the front who won't let you actually have a go at using what they're talking about - and how many training sessions has that happened at....
Still, tomorrow is a new day, the technical issues from today have been resolved (hopefully) and there are teachers & children to work with tomorrow. I'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone via twitter who contributed today, either on the wallwisher or on #tweetmister_jim. It's very much appreciated.
I'll let you know how tomorrow goes... tomorrow!
The morning started off well at a fantastic, newly built school called Murton Community Primary School (or 'The Ribbon' as it's known locally). Their resources are phenomenal. Loads of iMacs, Dell notebooks & plasma screens instead of whiteboards.
I started off with twitter, displaying the fantastic response from my PLN and their tips as to why you should use twitter. The staff were all geared up to signing up, when twitter reported being 'over capacity'.. grrr! Still, most people said they would go away and sign up. A fantastic response about the generosity with which the people I know on twitter share. Thank you, for convincing others of how beneficial it can be.
We then looked at primarypad. A great piece of kit, I'm sure you'll all agree. I went down the road of explaining that technology - however fancy - needs to be used in the correct context, in a structured and beneficial way. There's no point using it when a piece of paper will do the job more effectively. That seemed to get their attention. Eh? Isn't this guy all about tech? Why's he not telling us we have to use it?
I like the idea of thinking clever, not thinking lots.
After showing the staff twitter & primarypad - both of which went down really well, the unthinkable happened. At 10:30, a mere 1hr into my day, the servers crashed. Completely.
We took an early break. In my head I was repeating various obscenities & wondering whether the staff there would want to come back afterwards. They did. Luckily, my blagging abilities came into their own and we talked about various things that I would be showing them (if the server fixed itself...), StoryBird, VoiceThread, Learning Logs, Blogging & I talked about how I use it - For an hour and a half. After lunch, which was lovely, we were told the problem wouldn't be resolved today, but a school 20 mins away had a room we could use. The problem was, there wasn't enough tech for them to be interactive (which was one of the main points of the day). I felt that the staff there were receptive though, understanding that we had to make the best of it.
After a whistle stop tour of blogging, a look at storybird & voicethread we finished early. I'd have kept it going for longer if they were able to participate, but I get conscious of how tedious it can be to simply listening to someone at the front who won't let you actually have a go at using what they're talking about - and how many training sessions has that happened at....
Still, tomorrow is a new day, the technical issues from today have been resolved (hopefully) and there are teachers & children to work with tomorrow. I'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone via twitter who contributed today, either on the wallwisher or on #tweetmister_jim. It's very much appreciated.
I'll let you know how tomorrow goes... tomorrow!
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