Gearing for a great stretch

I have spent most of today's not child-care related moments banging these keys and scouring my connections for resources and inspiration. These next two weeks hold the following: two-day workshop on wikis, one day workshop on social bookmarking, two-day workshop on web 2.0 teaching strategies, two-day workshop on Google Apps, and a two-day workshop on research 2.0. Needless to say, all my summer slacking is beginning to haunt me and steal my sleep.

In actuality, I can't tell you how "geeked up" I am about running these workshops. Most are near full or over-capacity (15 teachers for us), so there is interest. There was so much talk about how to get teachers into these classes, and during the school year that problem haunted me, but I took marketing to several shameless levels at the end of the year. It paid off in the attendance numbers. Now, for the content....

Last week, in the Connective Writing/blogging workshop I ran, the skype-in session with Clay, Konrad, and Carolyn was a huge hit and all participants seemed to enjoy it, and if you listen to the event, I spoke of using guests to expand the knowledge base in these workshops. I wasn't kidding. So, here I go again, asking if anyone would be interested in a skype session with a group of about 10 teachers on Thursday morning, August 2nd, around 10:00am EST (GST-4, currently) for a discussion of how to use the tools of Web 2.0 within your classroom. The focus here is going to be on seamlessness, whereby we make the technology a transparent issue in the teaching. Here is a brief description of the class, and I look forward to hearing from anyone that is around:

How many times have you marveled at the things your students can do on the Internet? How do you harness that ability and focus it in a targeted direction? Where the Internet used to be about gaining access to information and researching, today’s Internet, dubbed “Web 2.0,” is all about creating content and using services.

This workshop will focus on using the web to produce dynamic content for yourself and your students. We will use two types of data visualizers to take authentic research and statistics, either from your classroom or from a different source, and produce various types of data manipulations that you can use to help your students see the data in meaningful ways. Because of the shift away from a one-way flow of information on the web, we are all now able to access experts in fields like never before. We will examine ways to bring content experts into your classroom via Skype, a free Internet telephone service, producing podcasts, screencasts, and slidecasts, and co-blogging with other teachers, experts, or members of the community.

Upon completion of the workshop, participants will have a host of resources that they can take away from the class and apply in their own professional practice.