I was scheduled to meet with elementary school teachers yesterday …
On paper, the training was supposed to be Promethean “ActivInspire Beyond the Basics” … that can mean sooooo much. Since I did not do trainings at that school last year, I was not really sure what “beyond the basics” meant for those teachers …
But I wanted the time I spent with teachers today to be beneficial for them and guided by the questions they had …
That is where LiveBinders comes in …(Stay with me … I will make a connection … eventually)
I knew teachers had some questions about “clickers” (expressions and votes), so I wanted to have some resources to be able to give to them. Since I did not know the exact topics that would be covered, I wanted to have more than enough resources!
I went to LiveBinders and searched for binders using the keywork Promethean or ActivInspire. I found binders on Activexpressions, Activotes, registering, creating questions, and lots of interactive sites to be used with the ActivBoard.
I could have done a google search or even looked a few sites I have used in the past. However, I was able to use the knowledge of the collective group to my benefit.
When people create a LiveBinder, it is normally because they have found information they want to pull together and remember or share. I was able to save time and searching by looking at the binders others had searched to create!
I liked most of the resources and sites in these LiveBinders but there were a couple of resources or pages that did not really match with my focus or the direction of the school system, so if copying was enabled on the LiveBinder, I made a copy and took out the pieces I did not want to include (I made sure to still give credit to original creator).
Then I needed a way to pull together all the LiveBinders I was finding …
I could make a list on a wiki or webpage …
I could create a symbaloo …
I could make a presentation pulling them all in …
Did you know that you can put a LiveBinder inside a LiveBinder inside a LiveBinder? I could have made one LiveBinder by combining all the LiveBinders I found … (I have done that in the past).Then I remembered something else I could do on the LiveBinders site! I made a virtual shelf to showcase the specific binders I wanted. After making that shelf, I could embed it on a webpage or put the link somewhere easy to access!
So that is what I did … I put the link to the shelf on the website of the Instructional Technology Department!
Teachers may still have to search a little to find the information they are looking for … but the searched was narrowed (and would not take as much time) since I pulled together resources in LiveBinders that others has already put together!
We had a good day of learning together … and the teachers went away with places to go find the resources we talked about as well as a direction to find even more!
The focus of today was on Promethean and not LiveBinders, but at the end of a couple of the sessions, a few teachers said they were able to see some ways LiveBinders could be used and now wanted to learn more about LiveBinders!
I never know what is going to make an impression and motivate learning …
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