Monday, March 17, 2008

Cullowhee and the Librarians

Happy St. Patrick's Day. A young, Mooresville, Irish girl gave us all green necklaces to wear for celebrating and to keep from getting pinched.

Let me introduce this week to you. Our WCPSS middle school media specialists' PLC (learningteammiddle) applied to and received a scholars' week here at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching better known as NCCAT. The purpose of our study is to investigate 21st century skills and the role of the media specialist. For those of you who don't know about NCCAT, it is available to NC teachers, free of charge, for a full week that is heavenly. The folks up here treat us like royalty and provide a place to learn and study - without interruptions. Teachers are very fortunate here in NC to have a space to learn and renew.

So it's the end of the day on Monday - faces plastered to laptops - creating 21st Century learning. Here are the voicethreads we created. The next question is, how will we use Voicethread with the teachers and students? We had fun figuring out our avatars and stage names which we would never have time for on a normal work day. Mindy created a pbwiki for us to post ideas and links. Susan posted some great links on the pbwiki. She is continuing to read and deeply understand 21st Century Skills. She got a delightful Skype call today from her daughter and granddaughter. Pat (Book Face) commandeered the Voicethread learning. Kim led us through the Google docs details. Angie created a blog and also took some pictures on the wildflower hiking trail. Bev (nuttylibrarian) worked very hard to get her webcam loaded but will try again later. Deborah set her personal goals and is working on a transition program for Martin and we are sad to say that she is planning to retire at the end of this school year. An of course they did much more than that but we don't have the space to cover it all. As for me, I worked on my pbwiki site, looked at some inquiry lesson plans to prepare for an upcoming lesson, learned voicethread from Pat, practiced Google docs, and generally tried out many other ideas that have been floating around today.

As for eating, we had a great big breakfast, lunch and we will be going to dinner in 1 hour. I have time to check out diigo.com which was recommended from Gayle Holmes. I accidentally called her last night on Skype and she was kind to me and offered her help anytime that our group needs it.

Peace and harmony in the mountains.

Until later, be still.

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