Ahhhh. The first week of summer.
Report cards are done, kids are off having fun with their own families, and teachers get a much deserved rest.
I still remember the bliss of the first Monday that the alarm didn't go off. It was usually the day after the Men's Final of Wimbledon, so I really needed to sleep in after getting up at 6 AM to have my strawberries & cream. I was really happy to watch Novak Djokovic win his first Wimbledon title yesterday. But then I had to get up this morning. What's up with that? Oh yea, I went corporate. And I'm glad I did, because I get to keep learning & sharing over the summer, for starters!
image courtesy http://www.telegraph.co.uk
In my experience knowing teachers the past 10 years, there seem to be two different categories of teacher - the type like my aunt, who dives right into planning for the next school year - tweaking, changing units, or more recently, putting more content into Notebook software.
Or, you're like me - where I needed to decompress for a few weeks before I ever ENTERTAINED the idea of work stuff.
So, over the summer, I'll be still offering some info here and there to help enhance your classroom in the fall. I'll try not to bombard you with mountains of awesome stuff, though...because if you're like me - it'll be in one ear & out the other until the last week of July!
I was trying to follow the buzz of ISTE as best I could the past week, though I admit I could have done a better job. A former colleague & friend from Calgary (@gwoitas) tweeted about this article from Edutopia. I've always loved Edutopia as it's George Lucas' Educational Foundation & I always thought that if I worked for them, I would magically be cast as a relative of Princess Leia. HAHAHA!
But, anyhoo - here is the link from the ISTE article from Edutopia http://www.edutopia.org/blog/edubloggercon11-iste11
I was particularly intrigued by the 'Some New Cool Tools of Note' at the bottom of the article. The Web 2.0 tool that I wish I could try with kids would be Storybird - http://storybird.com/
image courtesy http://storybird.com/
The pre-created illustrations are beautiful, or kids can start with a topic instead of illustrations - which caters wonderfully to different learning styles. And - right off the bat - it advertises the feature of collaborative storytelling. I can see kids writing these together, class stories, you name it. So, I will leave this gem with you & have visions of kids writing stories using this tool in the fall.
Lastly, for those of you in the BC area - I will be running some SMART Notebook training sessions this summer.
If you go to our Education Workshops section of the website & click on Vancouver you'll get full details & pricing information. I hope to see a lot of teachers at these sessions - I'm really excited about my first series of training workshops in BC!
http://sharpsav.com/education-workshops-registration.html
Enjoy the well-earned break & go and sit on a patio with a fun beverage for me...
Sasha 
