I just returned from a wonderful Friday/Saturday conference in Toronto where OTF hosted an event and had Will Richardson return to give everyone some big idea thinking about how to ‘narrow’ our classroom walls and move our students out of the physical classroom and into the 21st century classroom. I was able to spend one of the days as a tech-helper and the other as a presenter for Social Media workshops.
People were constructing knowledge, and blogs, and wikis, and multimedia pieces and google apps and learning networks all over the place …how cool was that!
After attending this event last year, my twitter PLN pretty much exploded into use after sitting dormant for a year or so while I considered it a completely useless thing (who really wants to know what I’m doing?) But, as it turns out, the people that I met last February, and continue to network with have become some of the greatest resources that I have right now…because they want to know what I’m learning, and they are willing to share what they are learning! I am so honoured to be learning from these folks!
Even more wonderful was meeting f2f with some of the people I’ve met online through twitter…that continues to make me smile whenever that happens. 🙂
I decided two things this weekend:
1. It really will be worth it to flip my blog over to wordpress and gather my resources all in one place…however hard that will be to actually move everything over here….and notice…I’m going to start using it NOW! I found the import feature…just as my friend Peter had mentioned…yahoo!
2. The “unconference” is really what I’d like to explore with some of our amazing Ontario educators. Although I am chairing a pretty big conference in a couple of weeks, I feel that teachers want more grassroot approaches, more about learning, more about teacher networking and less about fancy schmancy hotels and exhibit halls. The amazing talents and expertise of our Ontario teachers needs to be shared and celebrated! We are doing some amazing things!
Learning Zone 
Sounds like a great conference. Just curious about the flip to wordpress. What would your recommend for a personal blog and for a class blog ran by the teacher? I am having the hardest time deciding as both are relatively new to me. Thanks.
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I used blogger originally as a classroom teacher and it really suited my needs with younger students, and it’s REALLY easy to learn if you are a beginner. Because I want to have more of a website feel to my personal blog, wordpress suits me better for this and I was able to just import my Blogger blog all in one click. Easy.
Another friend who has all of her students with a separate login (Gr. 3) uses Blogmeister and loves it. Here’s a link to her blog so that you can take a look. http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=67293 Blogmeister was created by David Warlick for the specific purpose of providing a safe place for their kids to blog.
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