The first six ActivBoards are humming along as well as can be expected with our pioneering bunch from ActivBoarding. Although I still moan regularly about the fact that 95% of the posts there come from me, I have got my boss to check out educational blogging and she even contributed a post. I think I have a solution to try and get them on the blogging train and encourage other staff members to give it a go. In my role here, I offer Training and Development sessions for staff that counts towards their T&D hours for the year. (Here in South Australia, we need to complete 37 and a half verified hours of T&D every year - then the Government gives us the final week of the year off before Christmas, bringing us into line with the rest of Australia. Adelaide is sometimes referred to as the "sleepy hollow" of the country.) I've shown teachers how to design webpages, how to operate a thumbdrive or use a scanner (don't laugh) or even how to use attachments in e-mail. So, maybe the go is to run a course on Blogs 101, get them reading blogs via a preset Bloglines account (original idea, Steve Dembo), set up their own account (Blogger is good, but hey, you can't go past edublogs, I say!) and show them the basics of posting, comments etc. Then give them an hour every week on a Tuesday afternoon where they can come in, read their feeds, post to their blog, play with some of the other tools - Technorati, deli.cio.us, Furl, plus others that will have evolved by then and they accumulate hours of official T&D towards the required 37 and a half. I would have no idea how much time I've committed to developing my blogging skills and knowledge - it would be a lot by my own choice. But the big argument thrown in my face is that there isn't enough time to do this. Well, if I provide the time to get my colleagues started, there goes that excuse.
Well, I've strayed completely from my original intent for this post but it was to mention that the school is doubling its IWB quota and I am holding a workshop for interested staff next week to groom the next prospective IWB users. I've been developing a flipchart presentation (similar to Powerpoint, but with interactive components) that I might post a link to here when it is ready. It covers the starting points as I've already covered the pedagogical reasons at staff meeting a fortnight back. There are some very keen teachers, some who think they might be interested, a few from another private school dropping by to check it out and one very brave teacher who is not technologically confident at all who wants to come to find out what it all involves, even if in her words, she would be "daunted by it all." So, what you want to know before you had one of these exciting tools installed in your classroom? I hope I hit the right notes with this.