Professional Development for Teachers Using Web 2.0 Skills

This week in class, we created a Professional Development presentation for teachers. We needed to teach about a tool we'd learned about in class.

I chose to make a PowerPoint on classroom blogs. Now, total disclosure here - I've made about four PowerPoint presentations ever, which has to be a record low for a graduate student. I've used PowerPoint once, Keynote once, and Haiku Deck twice. My children (ages 8 and 11) laughed at me. They'd made more PowerPoints than I had for sure. My husband, a biology professor, has one set for each class. So my challenge with this assignment wasn't content but methods. I was seriously proud of myself for one thing, though. I managed to embed a podcast and a YouTube video within the PowerPoint. It took me about an hour and a half to figure out the video. My husband laughed at me, and said that I had to go from 0 to 60. Well, I'm in my classes to learn, right?

Anyway, like I said, I chose to focus on classroom blogs. In most schools I've been in, the teachers have a link off the school website, and they post homework and maybe a few pictures. But in my own experiences, I've never seen a teacher post collaborations with their students. I went looking for examples online, and I found so many great blogs. Some blogs I liked were Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog, Step Into Second Grade, Miss Jordan's Class @ Barwon Heads Elementary School, and Mrs. Duncan's Grade 7/8 Blog. There is so much kids can do on blogs! Just to name a few, there can be parent communication, posting student work, students writing posts and commenting on each other's posts, communication with other students around the world, and pictures from school events.

Here's my PowerPoint: