Here is the write-up for the 2 hour Professional Development seminar that I ran today for 9 dedicated teachers who showed up on a sunny Saturday, after a full day of Pro-D on Friday.

Start Your Own Blog
A practical session that will introduce you to blogging.
You will see how others use their blogs and you will get a chance to create your own blog.
You will also learn just how easy it is to create links, add pictures and even movies to your blog.
Also, you will learn a bit about web2.0 and very easy to use tools that make your time on the web faster and friendlier.

Start Your Own Blog on Edublogs Wiki on Wikispaces

& a blog post with instructions on how to hyperlink, embed images and videos, as well as tag a post on edublogs,

Making a Splash with Your First Post

I did my best to make these resources that could be: a) used by others to structure their own Pro-D sessions; and b) used as a self help tutorial.

... any feedback would be appreciated.

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 The session went very well with the teacher participants asking great questions and showing enthusiasm. Overall, I spent too much time talking about the tools, and didn't get onto creating their blogs until we were rushing against time. Feedback from one participant was that we should build the blog first, then talk about the tools- an excellent idea, and I will change the wiki sometime soon (well, not too soon, I've spent enough of my life collecting resources and building these tools over the last couple weeks!)

The power of WE: Special thanks goes to a few people who saved me hours of time by helping me out, and by having great resources already built, so that I didn't have to create them myself.

• Kris (Wandering Ink) for helping me find worthy links for my example page: A variety of bloggers, blogging mostly about blogs and blogging. Kris also edited my 'Making a Splash' post. I hadn't published it yet so I threw it into a Google Document, where she edited it. We chatted on MSN throughout and then I cut-and-pasted the edited sections back into my post. It was easy to do - especially with our dialogue via chat. A teacher and a former student collaborating, (late on a Friday night), to create a tool for teachers, in a way that was impossible not too long ago... very cool!

• Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis for 10 Habbits of bloggers that win and How to comment like a king (or queen)... both great posts!

• Mike Temple for his blog Edublog Tutorials. This blog linked to another great resource: MSU (Michigan State University) video tutorial. Mike has done a great job with this blog!

Thank you to these people, and all the wonderful people that I linked to in on the wiki.  

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 Personal Reflections:

-This was the first time I tried to do technology based professional development, beyond introducing a few tools to my staff, and I am happy with how things went.

-We only had about 1:45 minutes and this would be a great 3 hour Pro-D. A typical teacher blunder when trying something out of your comfort zone... pack too much in!

-As a mac user, I need to be a little more familiar with a pc lab. 

-I really should have them make their blogs first, as was suggested.

-I only got the e-mail address of 4 of the participants and none of their new blog addresses- I'll have to hunt these down for a feed I created. I think this is a good idea to offer support and community for new bloggers, and I should make the collection of this information more formal.

* I invite feedback on the Start Your Own Blog tools... and I hope that others will find them useful!

Thanks, 

Dave.