Edustange

My | Prezi.

Two days have passed and I have not commented on my Tuesday Digital Portfolio Session. My schedule is too tight for quiet reflection at the moment and the Outlook To Do list is growing, not contracting at the moment. This is typical of late Septembers generally I suppose. The Digital Portfolio session was information rich and very engaging. A group of like-minded professionals and I arrayed before our laptops weaving a social network for a new community of purpose. Well I get excited about such things, though I notice no sudden burst of discourse over at the Division Forum.

This sense of excitement does not die the moment I step back into my prosaic classroom routine. It wraps around me now as I work with colleagues, share learning through instructional technologies with my young students, or sit with an arm around my wife using Skype to have a final (but not final) conversation with my son before he embarks on a six-month dream trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand.

My fourth and fifth graders swarmed me yesterday morning pleased to see me back in the classroom. It might be our working relationship, but the first remarks referred to the substitute teacher failing to use the Promethean ActivBoard during instruction. Eyes lit up around the classroom when I made a brief explanation for my absence and showed them yet another opportunity to learn and share themselves. I confess I multi-tasked at one point during my day. The class was in the lab and emails stared coming my way querying me on my whereabouts and activity. How quickly they embrace it all, but we have known that for decades now and many of our colleagues are the product of our early efforts. I found out four of my second and third grade health class students are on Facebook. I am old enough to be surprised by that.

Dean Shareski casually introduced us to Prezi, eye candy for presentations. It speaks to my affinity with concept mapping and I will definitely learn how to use it. Our meeting discussed formats for Digital Portfolios and it came to me that students might embrace Prezi as a logical way to present their learning. Imagine my fifth grader starting with the whole map and then zooming in on the learning outcomes and the media demonstrating their achievement. They would love it. I have a few brighter technological lights I want to share this with. Some people are more linear so they might like the sequential page. We are all learning here so I will see where it goes.