Day One Recap!

Colegio Euroamericano Summer Tech Class Day One!

Edgar and Edwardo ( I think I got his name right!) helped us get get on the wireless network and get the projector fired up.

We did some introductions...

And I introduced the first rendition of the class blog, a thoroughly uninspiring site, stark white, no pictures, only a framework for getting started... and discussed the challenge for the class to dive in and make it interesting, to add content as we go, to add their thoughts and reflections on what we cover and where we might head (which is Tuesday's 'in class' homework by the way!).

We looked over the 100 Reasons piece and discussed the philosophy of 'diving in.' We discussed exploring people's curiosities and the 'Story of Laura and the Watch' and the Reggio Emilia (here's one resource, and here's the 'official' site) approach to working with students.

Many thanks to Mena for bringing in some great snacks for folks while we worked today! Approaching day long classes with snacks is a key for higher, more sophisticated learning, right? It's a good way to fire up creativity I think.

We framed up ideas on class and personal exploration projects for the week. We have a lot of common interests! Some messy and spirited editing on our public Google Docs over on the right side of this blog is a great way to see the power of collaborative editing and get things going.

We took a dive into Twitter:

We explored Twitter and a bit of it's potential as a professional development resource, a source to 'subscribe' to topics and people who inspire you... a bit like having research assistants!

• We tried some searches in Twitter: cooking and photoshop (separately, but now I'm curious what searching for both of these together will bring up... and will try it after I finish writing here!) and got to see what came up in posts. Searching for terms you are interested in is a great way to find resources. I gave examples of how I use Twitter with students to find resources for their projects.
• We introduced how to use hashtags and fired one up for the course this week for people to use #st11m . Posting with a hashtag is a great way to broadcast to a larger audience. Want to broadcast to a larger audience? Try using the #edchat or #education hashtag... or do a search for it and see what comes up. Try finding hashtags for your interests or hobbies and search for them: it's a great way to sift through the 'twittersphere'.
• Find and 'Follow' people you like and build your network.
• I gave examples of how I use Twitter for professional development, education discussions and the like and also to find great art resources and music.
• We covered retweeting quickly, reposting things that you read that you like, broadcasting to people who follow you. 
• One of my favorite people to follow on Twitter is @guykawasaki ... and endless source of bizarre, and creative things on the web. Kawasaki (a short bio from Garage.com on him) uses Twitter as an engine to promote his books and business... and he's quite successful at it.
• Using Google to search for things like 'Introduction to Twitter' or "how to use twitter' will reveal some great tips like this and this to help you get started and learn more.

Investing some time into Twitter will churn up some great resources... and that's always a good thing.

Elisa stopped in to say hello and give us some updates on her mother. Our thoughts are with them through this very tough time and we'll all work together to help both of them and send them some love.

Allina stopped in with iPads and flip cams!

We took a lunch break, an important part of learning... especially in day long classes. Thanks for lunch Mena! Spicy tacos... love it! After lunch we got back to some project work, grouping folks up with like interests, exploring and sharing ideas.

We setup a few folks to be collaborative editors on the class blog. Many thanks to Ari for the first modification to the web site, a brown theme now... much more appealing than the grim framework we started with!

We turned down the bright fluorescent lights down and tossed some Tommy Emmanuel (guitar player) up on the big screen while we worked. We played one of Emmanuel's concert DVDs called Center Stage but here's a YouTube clip of an old song, playing four parts simultaneously... smooth stuff, and catchy):

Environment, as you'll see by the Reggio Emilia resource I linked above, plays a huge role in how people learn... or can... and should! Environment, lighting, and resources will be a recurring theme we discuss in class this week.

Much of the work we did today frames up what we'll be working on tomorrow!

My sincere thanks for everyones work today. It gets more strange from here!