Work Smarter, Not Harder
Filed Under (Education) by Administrator on 17-02-2008
After almost eleven hours of workshops and presentations this past week (has to be a record for me!) at three different venues, it was great to stand back and reflect on the various approaches and takes of the workshops.
It was a great compliment to be invited along to Alec Couros‘ class at the University of Regina last Tuesday night although I talked WAY TOO MUCH. He gave me an opportunity to chat about global projects (nearest and dearest to my heart) and about Women of Web 2.0 – another favourite topic. I hope his students felt they received some practical advice somewhere along the way. Alec has invited some crackerjack speakers in to his course this term and has graciously also opened it up so that many of us could lurk along the way.
I really prefer to present with others and, though the presentations went really well overall, I especially enjoyed presenting with some of my colleagues from LEARN for a variety of Québec educators on Wednesday.
The 15 Minute Challenge
We deviated a bit from our topic of showing off web 2.0 tools and spaces for classroom purposes to address the need to also use these tools for self-directed professional development. I introduced twitter and threw out the 15 minute professional development per day challenge originally created by David Jakes recently.
My colleague, Vince Jansen, did a great job of following my presentation spot about self-directed professional development with a few great visual metaphors to help explain how these tools make us work smarter, not harder. His approach to showing how these tools can really be used to bring it all to us in one place is worth a closer look.
First he used his favourite snack bar in smalltown QC as a way of showing off the variety of web 2.0 items from which we can choose to help us “work smarter”.
Then he used Alan November’s idea about info-mating to describe how we can “Google-mate” our lives using google docs and iGoogle as an environment which brings it all together as a personalized dashboard for our own learning and organizing.
Quite a few of the workshop attendees (the brave ones who made it through horrible weather and driving conditions) were impressed by this part of the presentation in particular.
The above slides were taken from a presentation he made last August to some educators in New Brunswick.
Of course, NetVibes and PageFlakes are also great dashboards, so check them out if “Google-Mating” isn’t your thing.
My presentations from last week can be found here:
Demystifying Online Learning Spaces
Spheres of Influence: A Presentation to ETEC grad class at U. of Regina
Hey there, Sharon. Feel free to approve or disapprove this comment as you will. I’m using it as a means to let you know that your blog has been selected by popular vote as “Blog o’ the Month” at the Blogger’s Hut on ISTE Island in Second Life. It will spend the month of March as the Featured for April RSS Feed item: New post titles will automatically display to Hut visitors in floating text, and a simple click of the RSS box will open a separate browser window displaying your blog.
As you know, traffic on ISTE Island is a constant stream of internationally diverse educators and hopefully will bring to your valuable blog new traffic. I congratulate you on this “little honor.”
See my own blog post at http://scottsecondlife.blogspot.com/2008/03/march-rss-feed-at-bloggers-hut-is-hot.html for a list of this month’s worthy candidates, and vote for your favorite!
Sharon,
I am a student at Illinois State University studying to be an educator in Technology Education. In one of my curriculum and instruction classes we are using many of the same tools you are using with Web 2.0. As a student myself desiring to become a teacher, I have been wondering how long it would take for technology to really make its way into the education sector. I am very excited to see that you are presenting this material. You could not have chosen a better title for this. With these technological tools we really can work smarter. With just the limited amount of exposure I have had with these programs, I already have started looking into ways I could implement them into my classroom. I just wanted to say that I appreciate the work you are doing and that you are helping to really make the education industry use all the tools it has at its disposal, so thank you again.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Michalek
Sharon,
It is great that you got that experience of presenting by yourself and with others in that series of workshops you were in. Web tools are important for classroom and personal professional development. As a college student looking to be a future educator I have been introduced to a lot of developing web tools for educators, and think it is great that you took part in getting these ideas out there. Working smarter and not harder goes quite well with what you are talking about, in technology helping our development as educators. I was particularly intrigued by the personal dashboard that you mentioned. This appears to be a great organizational tool that I hope to use in the future. I hope you continue to develop these ideas, because technology can always be improved on, and wish you luck in continuing to spread your knowledge on this subject area.
Veronica Pollack