Joe Dale had invited me a few weeks ago to participate in a Flashmeeting. He asked me to contribute my ideas and thoughts on blogging and podcasting and how to integrate technology in general in the classroom to a professional development staff session at his school in England (Nodehill Middle School).

I continue to be so impressed with Joe and his diligent preparation. We had a “practice” flashmeeting session the week prior to the day, when Joe patiently explained the interface to me. It was really helpful and I would recommend to anyone to have a trial run before the “real thing”. Since I was not the organizer of the professional development and was literally half a world away from the actual physical event, I especially appreciated Joe’s great guiding questions that made it very easy to prepare and feel at ease. Not only was Joe’s preparation and execution of the event great, the follow-up on Joe’s original post is simply superb. Joe’s bulleted list of topics and links to sites and tools that were discussed in the provided MP3 file of the event are an invaluable tool. Now the last part of the learning process, your personal reflection, is now up to each one of us by blogging on your personal site and/or continuing the conversation as comments on Joe’s Blog.

Being part of this professional development for teachers event and experiencing first hand the process of a global collaborative learning was awesome. Making connections with people, who otherwise one would have never had the opportunity to meet or exchange ideas and thoughts with, was simply great. It was invaluable, as a teacher, to have experienced this connection, in order to see the value it can bring to student learning. I especially enjoyed when History teacher Nick Wiltshire came in front of the camera to ask about how podcasting could be used in the History classroom. Let’s continue answering here and building a network of learners across the globe. Please leave a comment if you have links or ideas for him.

You can listen to the entire flashmeeting by re-playing it here.

Being part of this professional development for teachers event and experiencing first hand the process of a global collaborative learning was awesome. Making connections with people, who otherwise one would have never had the opportunity to meet or exchange ideas and thoughts with, was simply great. It was invaluable, as a teacher, to have experienced this connection, in order to see the value it can bring to student learning. I especially enjoyed when History teacher Nick Wiltshire came in front of the camera to ask about how podcasting could be used in the History classroom. Let’s continue answering here and building a network of learners across the globe. Please leave a comment if you have links or ideas for him.