First Session!

I am so tired! It was the third day back for teachers today, and we had meetings ALL morning. Then, after a quick lunch, I presented my first professional development session on PlanbookEdu. I wanted to open all of my sessions to all staff members, but this Web 2.0 application is not free. My principal was willing to pay for up to twenty participants. I had 10 participants today, and they were all so excited about the presentation.

It was interesting (and a bit frustrating!) that many chose to explore the program on their own while I was presenting, and they did not follow along with me. Then, they had questions later because they had not been paying attention. There were some good questions at the end, and some things that I just sent the company an email about. A man from the company (Matt) replied within the hour and answered all of my questions. Now, I just have to submit the names and email addresses to my principal, and the man from the company will set up all of the accounts.

There were varying ability levels within the group, and that made it difficult to manage all of the people in the group. For example, some teachers were off and running setting up the application preferences, while others were having trouble just creating an account. I can now see the benefits of having multiple teachers lead one session. I need to consider how I will handle that for the next staff presentation. Only one person requires some follow-up, and I will easily be able to help her because I work with her one-on-one as my National Honor Society co-sponsor.

Although I was nervous, I thought that today went really well! Quite a few people have already taken the follow-up survey too! Now, I will spend my evening preparing for leading the first session with my department tomorrow with ASPEN training. It is technically the second session, since I began before school ended last year, but I am not going to include that in my internship. Here's to finishing the week strong!