Busy, busy, busy

Feeling more than a little overwhelmed, I made a resolution to slow down last weekend and do fewer things. That all went down the hatch once I was back at work. The big project was helping a Gr. 9 English teacher and her students create stories of compassion using iMovie. I had never used iMovie before but that didn’t phase me. Maybe it should have. I believe in relying on the expertise of students and often that works well as we learn together. We had moments of both triumph and extreme frustration.

The finished compositions will be part of a Compassion Project being undertaken by several local districts and as soon as the site is available to the public I’ll post about it here.

My second project was to help one of the Social's teachers start her own wiki. She is new to teaching and very keen. Listening to Wikispaces Illuminate session on using wikis in education was very helpful. It will be archived and information on how to access it will be posted on their blog.

I have been working on a presentation I’ll be giving in early December on using Thomson Gale’s online databases. I put up a new page in my wiki and started adding some student assignments and a SlideShare I created on using Biography Resource Center. Have a look and tell me what you think as I've only used SlideShare a little and would love some feedback before the big event.

While all this was going on several colleagues and I were practising to become comfortable video conferencing using Skype and MeBeam, a group conferencing application that can be run through Skype. Great fun although the kids all thought I was crazy as I seemingly chatted away merrily to myself in my office.

Altogether a very satisfying week and a great opportunity to increase the gray matter.