Despite having a day dealing with some very emotional kids, I had a day that left me feeling like a true professional. I was sharing with colleagues while colleagues were sharing with me. I met with four teachers today to go over what we had been learning about Moodle; I shared my experience with registering students and then assisted them in trying it out. It worked! I then had a Science teacher show me a Chemistry 30 resource that he was using with his class; I was amazed and then I learned the source was from Centralischool! I was dumbfounded as he showed me the resources in the site; I had heard of it before, but didn't realize you could see whole courses without being a registered student so had never bothered visiting it before. Do I feel sheepish? I feel like a missed a memo or something. What a tremendous resource for teachers!
I also had a moment of clarity as far as the internet and social networking go. The online world of educators that I have become a part of advocates strongly for sharing and I have learned of some tremendous resources from that professional community. Yet today, I learned of a resource from people I work with and have known of it for years, but hadn't shared it with me or other colleagues because ... it never came up! What a shame! The f2f world has some catching up to do with the online world. The amazing thing is that none of this would have happened if I had not been exposed to the the culture of sharing that I am learning about with my personal learning network which has pushed me to share with my colleagues. Ironically, it seems the tweets on twitter are now reaching the ears of those who haven't yet taken the time to see its true value.
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3 comments:
It's funny. I actually did the evaluation for Central iSchool and developed a very long report. One of the findings ... some good resources, EXPENSIVE program but VERY poorly marketed. Hardly any of the SK teachers we talked had ever heard of it, despite MILLIONS of dollars that were sunk into it. In other words, don't feel bad. But now you know! :-)
Hey Stephen, I've been using ideas from centralischool for my grade 9 Math, Science and Social Studies for the past 3 years and all I can say is what a life saver it was for me when I started teaching middle years that first year. I mean, I was so glad that I found this site earlier on in the game and happy to find that there are other ways you can teach instead of just using a stuffy old textbook before I started teaching grade 9. I use many of the ideas and have tweaked them to meet the needs of my students (and the resources we have to use in school as well).
I wish they had more on Language Arts though.
I've been using and promoting Central iSchool for many years now as a valuable resource - however - it is unfortunate that it is not kept up. Many of the links are no longer working and some updating needs to occur. Wouldn't it be great if someone got a grant to update and enhance the information and lessons? To bad something so great has fallen to the wayside!
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