The Digital Backpack

 This week I had the opportunity to run the monthly faculty meeting, along with the school librarian.

The purpose was to debrief the schools’ recent technology showcase to gather feedback and show off some of the projects that resulted.

We organized 6 groups, each was to discuss one of the following 6 questions

1. Reflect on the level of support you received.

2. Reflect on the flow of time during the sessions.

3. Did you learn what you expected to learn?

4. Reflect on product and process

5. Describe you engagement during the sessions

6. Were you pushed out of your comfort zone during any aspects of the showcase?

To organize the groups, we customized a smartboard interactive dice.  On entering, they were asked to  roll the dice, staff were assigned the group they rolled.

Then we took the staff through all of the technology they had touched since the planning stages.

• Wiki,
• smartboard,
• google forms,
• netvibes,
• delicious,
• slideshare,
• rss,
• powerpoint,
• photostory,
• podcasting with audacity
• schoolloop(cms) and our library online catalog

Then we set the smartboard timer to 12 minutes and set them off to start their discussions.

After the twelve minutes we had a whole group share. We recorded 5 to 10 words that came up during each of the 6 discussions.

The reflection words were recorded and pasted into wordle (above).

Projects created during the showcase were shared

Our last question was what improvements could be made if we got the opportunity to redo another technology showcase.

The recommendations were

• Longer sessions (30 minutes felt rushed)
• (More)Showcase(s) in the fall and the spring
• Preview/Demo the workshops before the showcase
• Make sure software was installed on machines before showcase to allow for experimenting beforehand
• Allow for time to “play” after the workshop

As an unexpected benefit, several teachers post faculty meeting have come to talk about projects they now want to start.  Sounds like a plan.

Links:

The resource page for the workshop

Technology Showcase Post

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