A group of Exeter instructional technofolk and I attended a professional development workshop yesterday at Nobles and Greenough School and it was a very exciting day. We caught up with IT friends from other schools, met some we only knew by screenname, and learned more (there's always more) about Web 2.0, useful tools, and teaching that had us all chatting in the car all the way home. Most thought-provoking for me, though, was Will Richardson's comment that we need to transform our own personal learning strategies before we can transform our teaching.
That comment had me thinking about all the time I spend researching on the web for my vocational and avocational activities. Yesterday we were treated to a great presentation on RSS. Although I understood before the talk the concept of Real Simple Syndication that uses a "reader" (such as GoogleReader, BlogLines, or others) to collect, or "aggregate" postings from the websites you frequent, I didn't understand the power of the reader to conduct searches for me, to organize my materials, to track what I'm reading and what others are reading.
I have spent a bit of time this afternoon setting up a reader and a few feeds to get my head around RSS. I have also explored a few of the new tools that we saw yesterday. More on that later...It's so nice to come away from a day of professional development energized and not exhausted. Thanks to Tom Daccord for organizing a great day!
