Where did February go? and a Collaborative Adventure

Well I admit I have been a bit behind in my blog postings. I suppose though that having only 28 days in February is not a good excuse? It was certainly a busy, busy month. I attended two conferences in one week. We missed nearly a week of school because of snow and ice. February disappeared rather quickly.

So to update my world here, I want to share an experience I had during my days off school from the weather first. It was an amazing example of true collaboration.

The day began with a phone call and text messages from school telling me what I already knew, that school would be closed. Sitting down with a cup of coffee, I logged on to my laptop and took at look at the postings on Facebook. One of the postings was from Discovery Education about live streaming from the the Florida Technology pre-Conference event. Hall Davidson was speaking so I jumped on over to LiveStream and logged in to view. I only caught the end of his talk and then Kathy Schorck was speaking. At a point during her talk she gave the people attending an assignment. Divided into groups, they were given the rest of the day to create a presentation of some sort with a science focus.

This is where the fun began.

There were about 12-15 of us logged in at LiveStream and a constant back channel was happening with conversations ranging from the topic, to links, to the weather which was keeping many of us at home. I am not sure who suggested it, but someone said "Let's be a virtual table and do a project also." And we were off!

Each of us collected a picture of what was outside our door, the weather report for our area. A google form was created where we entered information. We then created a google presentation where we inserted our pictures and weather information. We also had a tag in flicker to upload our pictures to also. We found lessons and activities from different sources about weather and included them on the end slides of the presentation. It was a wonderful collaborative presentation.

At the end of the pre-con event, all of the "live" tables presented their projects. I am not sure who presented ours, but someone shared it at the event. I must say the room was quite surprised that people who were not even there were able to participate in the activity. It was quite awesome!

I was so excited after this. It really represented what can be done collaboratively using web tools with people from all over the United States. I am thrilled that I was able to be a part of this true collaborative effort.