St Peter Chanel
Posted by Allanahk on February 18, 2008
Today’s school was St Peter Chanel- a lovely Catholic school with well appointed and interesting classrooms. We are going to look at how to enhance the taking of digital photographs to better utilise the resources they already have.
Then a short trip back to Motueka South. Thanks everyone for your comments on yesterday’s post. I am not the only one to go to through the angst of having things go ‘not quite right’ when preparing a presentation where the web is fairly crucial. The inimitable Darren Kuropatwa and Wes Fryer had a little meltdowns as well…
Today I did my very first ‘Possibilities of using Web2.0 in the Primary Classroom’ staff meeting at Motueka South. I turned up two hours early- just in case! I needed every minute- I had pre-bookmarked my websites on my home network before I left home in tabs in case all else failed.
My first option was my trusty Apple but I had to change computers as no one knew how to connect it to the network- got the cluster PC out- waited for it to install updates and got it connected via a really long ethernet cable that I had taken- just in case wireless wasn’t got to work. Thankfully I had already downloaded iTunes and Quicktime. I had bookmarked the sites with Mozilla but it wouldn’t connect so had to feverishly re-tab using Internet Explorer.
Podcasts and movies were pre-downloaded on the PC at least so no problems there as I had remembered to bring speakers of my own. Now to the data projector- no long power chord. Searched and found one- needed a double plug! Searched and found one.
The three o’clock bell went just as I got the data projector going and I ate my lunch and pretended everything was as smooth as custard ready for the teachers to stagger into the staffroom after a busy afternoon!
The session went well- I thought- after that rigmarole and I managed to inspire a number of teachers to follow up with additions to their blogs and hopefully some will take up podcasting soon.
I shared this Edublog with the staff and some were amazed by the power of my learning network of helpful support people and commenters- thank you guys.
Lessons learnt…
- Be prepared in advance and try to be self sufficient- power cords, junction boxes etc
- Flickr is blocked on many school networks- the photos I uploaded to Flickr for this blog didn’t show- use Skitch.
- Find out how to log on to a Smartnet server from an Apple- Learning at School may be able to help with this one- I will visit their trade display.
- Have a back up plan if all else fails.
- Don’t do too much in one session- try to keep it simple.
- Be really nice to support personnel- they are the support structure that keeps the wheels turning.
Can’t wait until I get my new Mac Book Pro with Parallels- won’t have to carry two computers around- one heavy like a brick.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:34 am
Allanah:
I have been enjoying hearing about all the new schools that you are working with. I really appreciate the lessons learnt. One of the biggest troubles with showing off technology is the amount of “stuff” that must be carried around to make things work: power cords, speakers, downloaded files, still images (in case all Internet fails). To top it all off, appearing calm after the struggles to set everything up just right.
Ann
February 19th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
You are the master of Kiwi Ingenuity! Boy, your Tasman Cluster is sure getting their money’s worth and some!!
February 19th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
It sounds like there is never a dull moment:) I totally sympathise – I had to be super prepared for our conference in Jan – especially after discovering there was 1 internet connection in the whole venue. Fortunately our tech support person was able to create an ad hoc network using 1 computer as a server – although it couldn’t cope with too many logged in at once. I think this is such an amazing opportunity for you. I have really enjoyed reading about all your adventures so far.