We started off the morning with a professional development training on Google. Our district is switching our e-mail system to Google because it will allow us to collaborate more easily. We were introduced to Google Drive, and we were able to experiment with multiple people editing a document at the same time. Next year our students will each have their own Google account and will be able to easily work from home and also collaborate with others, too, on projects. Our technology teacher also showed us all of the possibilities of Google Calendar. I'm especially excited about creating a classroom calendar and sharing it on my blog. We've just scratched the surface of what Google has to offer, but I'm excited about all the new collaboration that will be possible by using Google.
After school, I attended a class built around Ruth Ayres book, Celebrating Writers. Ruth visited our group back in the fall, we've met twice now since then, and she will visit again in April. We were each assigned the task of choosing one of her celebration ideas and implementing it in the classroom. While that was a valuable experience in and of itself, I really enjoyed hearing about the successes and struggles of the other teachers there. I feel like I left with a lot of great ideas and some smaller ideas, too, that I will use to tweak what I already do. There is great power is learning from each other's experiences.