Drape's Takes

Last night's Social Software in the Classroom open professional development class went as well as I had envisioned it could go from the beginning. To say that it went perfectly would probably be an understatement:

• Recording, transmission, and connecting went flawlessly.
• We opened with the first "show & tell" session that I know of that has included teachers from across the country. The topic: Bring your favorite Firefox plugin.
• We continued with a wonderful discussion about the in-class use of various exciting, online teaching tools.
• After a brief break, we were happy to interact with our first international guest speaker. Rachel Boyd (from New Zealand) was kind enough to explain to our class about a few of the experiences she's had in using blogging as an educational tool for her students. How many guest speakers from New Zealand have you brought into your class lately? +10pts to Rachel for her willingness to share.
  
• Finally, Rachel's discussion led perfectly into a discussion about blogging. We used Blogger as our tool of choice, simply because the participants already had Google accounts and the Blogger interface is relatively easy to use.
• In total, roughly 35 teachers from around the world participated in our class.
• It's been amazing to see how far we've come in 5 short weeks, and am glad that we were able to shine in this final session.
• None of this would have been possible without educational social networking! Classroom 2.0, EduBloggerWorld, FaceBook, and especially the Twitter network (my TwitterSchool) have been able to come together to make truly great things happen.