Rockin' Web Sites & iBooks Author

In terms of instructional technology, Thursday, June 20, could not have been much better.  I have been teaching a "Leadership in Technology" grad course for Madonna University during a condensed spring term.  We have eight, four hour meetings to accomplish our work.  Half of them were online.  But the others were killer, four-hours-straight in person sessions after we had all been to work.  Trust me, that is a challenging teaching/learning environment.

However, Thursday night, the four hours flew by me as Diana, Steven, Lisa,

Steven's home pate

Alex, Erica, Stacey, Christina, and Patricia presented their professional development projects to the rest of us.

Personally, the experience surpassed any of the fine conferences I have attended.  I learned so much from their presos.  Essentially, they were asked to develop a one-day professional development plan for their staffs.  These plans were posted to web sites they created, replete with outlines for all the workshops, supporting resources, a budget, etc. In fact two of the plans may actually be implemented in the near future.

Consequently we were treated to explanations of app after app, and strategy after strategy.  The insights I received into elementary school, middle school, and CTE instruction were especially broadening to me. The sites all look terrific and I am eager to dig in.

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Also on Thursday, I received a major break through on my personal summer project of authoring/co-authoring three iBooks.  Two of my fellow team members (Carol Shea and Lisa Schrimscher) on the  Mercy Tech iBook project  attended an iBook Author Hackathon presented by Zeeland teachers at Wayne State University.  

They shared a wonderful resource at iBook called Creating Open Inter-Active Books by Anthony DiLaura which I have begun reading and listening to avidly. The timing couldn't be better as I prepare to go to the ADE Institute in August in July and really delve into my authoring.

Section 2 of DiLaura's book