Howie...Where have you been????

My head is on overload…..so many events in the past months. I thought I would be watching the grass grow, watering the pants, playing golf and enjoying retirement. Little did I know how exciting my life would be after I retired January 31, 2008

I realized that I had not posted to the Blog in 6 months…SHAME on me…I advocate 21st Century Skills in the classroom and don’t keep my Blog up to date. Several conferences over the past 6 months have increased my airline miles but had prevented me from updating the Blog.. I will spend the next 2 weeks catching everyone up on the adventure of the “Emerging Technology Evangelist”.

The week of Feb.1,2008, found me in Austin, TX providing 3 days of hands on workshops. What a great group of teachers and administrators. Excited, energized, charged with enthusiasm and ready to set the work on fire. We looked at Global Communications via Building Learning Communities, created projects and then learned how to share them global. The second workshop included Visual Literacy and Digital story telling projects. Everyone created projects that told stories about their town, their favorites and a their best feature. We concluded with the third workshop on Web 2.0 and free software to use in the classroom.

In the Building Learning Communities Workshop we developed presentations that would provide background on six Community Projects and how to make a Global Connection. The projects allowed students to learn 21st Century skills and prepare them to meet the demands of the global community and engage them in mastering core curriculum skills. We discussed projects as models for driving education change and transforming educational institutions into model learning environments that cater to the broadest range of users and using collaboration tools.


In the Visual Literacy Workshop the participants now understand teaching, learning, and assessment strategies for working with the digital generation by creating Visual Literacy Projects. We helped them to interpret, use, appreciate, and create images and video using both conventional and 21st century media in ways that promote, advance thinking, decision-making, communication, and learning

In the Web 2.0 Workshop we discussed how Web 2.0 tools could translate traditional information skills for an information landscape into Web 2.0 application to use in the classroom. The participants discovered how Web 2.0 applications, Screencasting, e-pals communication projects, digital stories, Podcasts, Blogs, Wikis, handheld devices, and annotation software provide more engaging and collaborative personal computing environments for students and teachers, with emerging Web 2.0 development tools.
We created projects that involved social bookmarking and other classroom applications and discovered how to build an infrastructure for continual professional development
Our goal was to increase the awareness of educators with regard to Web 2.0 options and successful uses in classrooms in the U.S. as well as other countries.

Next POST…on to Nebraska