First steps towards digital collaboration

This week I ran a staff professional development session on how to set up a YouTube account and utilise this amazing resource.

I decided just to offer it as an after school activity for anybody that was interested. Taking the compulsory factor out of it and making it about staff making proactive choices about their own learning.  I had nearly every staff member present including our Principal!

No pressure Leanne!

My aim was to have everybody logged in and using YouTube to create playlists of resources that could then be shared with others. I found that some staff were using videos as resources already but were not using YouTube as a tool.

I had also created a Google site for the school. This holds the information from the session so that teachers can readily go back and find notes on how to do things.

One of my colleagues is a prolific user of YouTube and had never ever created a playlist before.  He was having the search the depths of his brain every time he wanted to re-watch or re-use a particular video.  In passing the next day we discussed the potential for connections and sharing within the team which then got us discussing sharing other types of resources too.  His playlists alone are going to be game-changers within the school.

And I guess that is the point I wanted to reflect on.  For me, presenting some information about how to set up a YouTube account was pretty straightforward.  As my colleagues 14yr old son said to me "so you basically taught them how to use YouTube? But that's so easy!". Well yes it is easy but actually to those who are new to the digital platform it is like reading a whole other language.  Their are new symbols along with new possibilities and I imagine the experience for some was quite overwhelming (in a good way). But what I have hopefully achieved through this small thing is opened a door towards more collaboration and sharing within the school. It may just be a very tiny opening to begin with, but I have plans in place for how to kick it open even wider.

Much kudos must go to the master of YouTube himself Jim Sill who inspired me at the GAFE summit in Auckland earlier this year. That man has so many playlists that I imagine Google created the "Ctrl f" search button just for him.

Where to start?

So this is my first time beginning the year in a classroom and to be honest I don't know where to start.

And I am not the only one.  Right now their are lots of beginning teachers (BT's) running around like headless chickens fretting about what they need to be doing right now.  The old hats are telling us to "just wait" but I know that I am going to need lots of time to think and plan about what to do.

I have been collating lots of ideas and resources for the past two years and have spent the last few days revisiting them.  I am keen to do lots of things but I also am hesitant as I need to wait and see where my school is at.

I always thought that when I finally got my own classroom we would have a class blog, be doing lots of blended e-learning, have a really integrated curriculum and be a little bit free range in terms of where our learning would take us.  I know get the feeling that this isn't always as easy to implement as one would hope.

My new school doesn't have blogs yet, or student emails and I see the red tape forming in front of me.

So I am using this planning time to revisit all my ideas and see if I can link some of them.  I will also be ready to present options to my school team and sound like I know what I am talking about. My Evernote folders are neatly organised!

I am also identifying the "regular" parts of the curriculum that I want to be more confident in.  I have asked for The Writing Book out of our Literacy budget and have been rewarded.  I feel the closest thing to attending a Sheena Cameron Workshop is to at least have one of her books on hand.  I have also investigated and purchased a pile of read alouds for the year and thought of activities to help us all get to know each other.

I'm calling on my biggest resource - my Professional Learning Network, the people I know in real life and the Twitterati (teachers on twitter) to help me, guide me and mainly just inspire me while I wait for it all to begin.