#METC12 tomorrow

METC  starts tomorrow and I am super excited to make connections, enhance my knowledge, and learn some new tricks of the trade.  I believe it was last year when I set the goal to meet as many people who were attending METC and whom were also part of the Twitterverse. This year is no different. Some of the people I meet at this conference I only get to see once a year, others I've had in depth conversations and brainstorming sessions with only on twitter.  I hope to achieve the same goal this year and share it all here. So if you see me around METC tomorrow or Wednesday please do not hesitate to shout out HI!

@stumpteacher

@meganmoncure Check

@MrA47

@Room214

@ghartman Check

@ideaguy42

@cmcgee202 Check

@debbiefuco

@beachcat11

@EdTechHawkey

@wmchamberlain

@johnccarver

@jorech

@manuelherrera33

@usamimi74 Check

@dianadell

@Clane

@technokato Check

@bizmark Check

@rushtonh Check

@corelyg Check

@KTVee

@tonyvincent

@Mr_Brim

@kat_byte

@plnaugle

@teachmom

Website Awareness Month

In my building this month, I've dubbed it: Website Awareness Month. Sharing tips and tutorials with staff on the work section of my blog and over at my YouTube station. We are also providing assistance all day on Wednesdays to help people work through, trouble shoot, brain storm, and talk about web site development in our media center.

The goals are to help people do little things to freshen up their sites, make them more dynamic, and in some cases take a look at their site for the first time in ages. I wanted to be able to have time where our staff could mark their calendars and plan on working on their sites as in my years working with them I've discovered, that even though they can meet with me anytime they request, they prefer to have a set date or time handed to them so that they can plan for it.

With BYOD in the possible horizon, it only makes sense to improve and enhance our websites as they may soon become (or at least I hope we can build them to become) the central hub of digital learning, giving students instant and quick user friendly access to the tools they need.

Quite the interesting and brilliant observation

When a student shared with me today that they found themselves bored in a class that they had originally thought would be "really fun" I suggested that they develop a way to learn the subject in an innovative way, on their own.

I asked the student "What would you do first to begin learning a subject you knew nothing about and had no teacher in?"

Their immediate response was to find a piece of software to teach them. I then suggested that, at their finger tips they had the entire internet, the world even, and that the possibilities lived outside of just a piece of software.

When I was sharing the story previously mentioned with @technokato she brought up a most excellent and brilliant observation:
Why is it we do not have an educational culture where students feel empowered enough to share with their teachers that they find a method of teaching boring and request an alternative avenue?

With quite literally, the world at our finger tips, why would we not empower students to speak up, and try something different? Allow them to identify and set their own learning goals? Allow them to challenge themselves to surpass their own goals?