Doug Johnson!

Today, I went to Doug Johnson’s preconference, “Eating the 2.0 Elephant One Bite at a Time” or “Dipping One’s Toes in the Social Networking Stream.” The presentation goes by both names, apparently! Wonderful! It was an overview of 2.0 tools and how you can use them in a library or classroom setting. He went over wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, and social networks. Then, we had a “tool talk,” where he quickly highlighted some of the other great tools out there like Flickr, Big Huge Labs, Facebook, TeacherTube, etc. I use a lot of these resources, so much of this morning was a quick overview for me, BUT, I did get some ideas on how to take a step back and sort of think about how I am using these tools. I do plan to do a 23 Things professional development with SCASL this year and his presentation really allowed me to think about how to show some of these resources to our late bloomers, so to speak. Those folks who haven’t taken the time to play with blogs and wikis. My favorite new tidbit was the “In Plain Language” show he started each topic off with. Those are perfect little movies to show teachers (or SCASL members) what a tool is and how to use it. I knew about the “In Plain Language” videos, but seeing them today used the way Doug used them really kind of inspired me in the model we’ll use for our 23 Things.

There were a couple of “shout outs” that I got nerdy about during the presentation (since I am a good workshop participant, I did not yell out and get too excited, I must say), but inwardly, I was very excited to see Cathy Nelson’s picture up there when Doug brought up his Skype list and SCASL Blogs! was in his RSS Feed! Yay SC!

Right now, I’m blogging while I wait to go to dinner. We are trying a mexican restaurant that my dad loved when he was out here a couple of weeks ago. After that, Kitt and I have to go to the AASL Affliate Assembly meeting – 8pm – 10pm. Late!

Till tomorrow,

VBF