Welcome to any principals who stop by from my session at Texas Association of Secondary School Principals on web 2.0 tools for administrators!
Some blogs we talked about in the session as a good starting point:
G-town Talks (and I quoted her superintendent)
I also highly recommended Will Richardson’s book, Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts, as a good place for administrators to learn about all things web 2.0.
Thanks to those of you who attended the session!
Carolyn, thanks for the inclusion. I am honoured to be along side the others you include and humbled by the mere inclusion.
Is there any way to get a synopsis of your presentation? I’m always looking for ways to catch the eye of my fellow administrators here.
Again, thank you.
Kelly,
Yes, there is. I’ll send it to you, but here’s a summary.
I first defined web 2.0, and then defined ways that administrators could use various tools, to better communicate, to model use of technology for their staff, to be more efficient in their own workflow, to create more transparency, and because I feel like librarians, administrators are somewhat isolated–to give them the ability to connect with other colleagues.
We talked about blogs quite a bit, and I showed them samples like your site ;), but also talked about wikis(including examples from a principal), bookmarking tools, a few of the google tools like Google Alerts and Google Docs, and Pageflakes, and how administrators could use these tools to keep up and collaborate with faculty. (It was a little interesting because we were told we wouldn’t have internet access for the conference, so I had to do screen shots of everything…)
We also talked a little about issues with filtering. My own district decided on unfiltering just one blog site(edublogs) for both staff and students as a way of allowing the tool to be used. Teachers are able to see most other blog sites as well. I also shared Will’s book, which has a sample letter that could be sent home to parents.
And we talked about how quickly things are changing, and how we can’t continue to “wall out” the changes as educators, because students need guidance “out there” online, and also we want our schools to remain a relevant part of their learning experience.
Part of why I decided to offer a presentation at this conference is because I think one of the first steps towards dealing with issues like filtering in a better way is to have administrators be more informed about the positive aspects of web 2.0. I also realize how busy administrators are, and so I felt that giving them an overview of many of the tools and how they could be helpful was a way of helping people get started.
I pointed them to a wiki I’d created for some other workshops, http://www.connectedlibraries.pbwiki.com , where I have some tutorials and links to help them learn most of these tools, also, which you are welcome to use.
I’m doing a similar presentation at Internet Schools West at Internet Librarian in October, but my focus there is going to be on how librarians can help their administrators with some of these tools and provide research support for their administrators using web 2.0 tools. Wouldn’t it be fun if I could come talk to administrators in your district? 😉
Hope that helps!
I’m really glad you are doing this kind of work. Thank you–and thanks for reading, including G-Town Talks in your presentation and links. Keep up the terrific work!