Drape's Takes

Other than a few bandwidth and occasional audio issues, OpenPD round three was another pleasing success. The first time an OpenPD session had been hosted by a teacher other than myself, Jamie Gustin - from Magnolia, Texas - did an excellent job in taking the reins. In this opening session, we established that each of the roughly forty participating educators has an existing wiki with which they will be able to work during the remaining four sessions. This session also marked the first time I have ever participated in a professional development session with Jordan School District teachers wherein we didn't meet together face to face. It has been my hope that using such a format will enable me to reach more teachers within my district, at a time that is convenient for them, without requiring them to go through the effort of driving across the valley in order to meet together.


Next Week

In next week's session, we'd like to dig deeper into the wiki toolbox to uncover a particularly useful feature within wikis: the ability EMBED objects. We hope to:

1. Demonstrate how objects are embedded.
2. Showcase a number of different kinds of objects that can be embedded. To accomplish this task, we ask that you, dear participant, Bring Your Own Embeddable Object to class. You know, a favorite embeddable widget - if you have one. If you don't yet have a favorite, be prepared to learn about a few new tools that can be used in connection with wikis.

1. Create a wikispaces account if you don't yet have one.
2. Join the OpenPD wiki.
3. Create your own wikispace. K12 teachers can get free premium wikispaces by following this link.
4. Post a link to your newly created space in the discussion tab of our List of Participants page.