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.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

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.