May+PDF+Reflections

May PDF Reflections-

The first document I looked at was Richard Byrne's 77 Web Resources for Teachers to Explore this Summer. It was exactly what I was looking to find to share with teachers on the Google Site for PD that I created for them. Even though I knew what most of the sites were (thanks to your class!), many I teach with do not know. What I liked about this even more was that it was neatly categorized for virtually every area of the curriculum and included descriptions and links for each web tool. I really enjoyed reading through the synopses of the various sites and learned a thing here and there about possible uses for sites that I hadn't thought of. I was also gently reminded about a few like HistoryPin and 60 Second Civics that I had forgotten about. I really thing that embedding this onto the PD Google site will give our teachers some summer "reading" that may really help them fully develop their 1:1 Moodle courses and stop looking for excuses like "I don't have time to search for resources" with this neat little tool.

The second document I viewed was a Google Docs Presentation by Chris Carman (and others). It was a slideshow that was for some conference, but it served as a great springboard for what I need to present at the end of May to the teachers in my district. I'm pretty sure I just saved several hours of work time not having to reinvent the wheel with the material in this presentation. It not only started at the beginning with an introduction to the "cloud", it went deeper to explain the various Google Docs choices out there and even gave a few curricular and student-related uses that each could be used for. This seems to be half the battle with teachers....knowing when to use these tools once they're learned. I will definitely be sharing this with teachers in my own presentation. While we have been a Google Apps school for about a year, there are still several who have not utilized it well (if at all). With our student computers arriving in 2 months, they can procrastinate no longer. I think that the simple, yet effective way that this pdf was put together will be a nice introduction for our teachers.