Professional Development?

This morning, as I do most Saturdays, I attended an online seminar from Classroom 2.0 Live!

This morning, unlike many, I was away from home and partially distracted by my parents’ wonderful dog. Here he is, attending to the web seminar when I stepped away for a moment.

This session, with Linda Yollis as the guest host, was perhaps the most invigorating and immediately relevant, in a round-about way. Though her talk was a lot about classroom blogs and how to engage students in the writing process through blogs, and of course I don’t have my own classroom (yet), it was fascinating to think about how her expectations and lessons are set up and communicated to families and students. Her advice to the teachers in the room is to start small. Recognize that blogging can be an adaptation of existing lessons/expectations, using modern technology to instruct in traditional communications as well as modern.

She has gradually added on as she has more experience. She also recommends re-using successful lessons…

All in all, a fine start to the weekend. As usual, I know I will keep thinking about this webinar all week long!

Middle of the day: Guys and Dolls, stage managed by my younger son, working with a director and musical director he has worked with as an actor before. The sun was shining, and I was sitting inside on some of the most uncomfortable bleachers in the world. But the students in the production did such a great job, it was worth it.

End of the day: I found a vegan (meaning relatively safe for me to eat) nut butter with real chocolate in it. That, plus some soy yogurt and two bananas made a very fine supper for me today, and should help with my achy muscles. Now watching the old Dr. Who (John Pertwee, Terror of the Autons), with the afore-mentioned critter snoozing next to me.

Tomorrow: hopefully a leisurely awakening, followed by dry, if not sunny weather, followed by a lovely classical concert, followed by… not sure. It is nice to be a little bit quiet and unstructured.