Directions

Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up an existing unit of instruction, advance one’s technical skills, work on that advanced degree or certification, pick up a new hobby, and finish many of the other items on our ever-growing To Do Lists. Let’s make Summer 2009 a time when we actually get to accomplish a few of those things and enjoy the thrill of marking them off our lists.

The Rules

NOTE: You do NOT have to wait to be tagged to participate in this meme.

• Pick 1-3 professional development goals and commit to achieving them this summer.
  
• For the purposes of this activity the end of summer will be Labor Day (09/07/09).
  
• Post the above directions along with your 1-3 goals on your blog.
  
• Title your post Professional Development Meme 2009 and link back/trackback to http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/2447.
  
• Use the following tag/ keyword/ category on your post: pdmeme09.
  
• Tag 5-8 others to participate in the meme.
  
• Achieve your goals and “develop professionally.”
  
• Commit to sharing your results on your blog during early or mid-September.

My Goals

• Improve my knowledge of project-based learning by attending the Special Education Teacher Leadership Academy in Charleston, WV in July
• Become more familiar with the new virtual desktop (and related tools) my state is offering by attending the July 15 workshop on WebTop in Charleston
• Keep up with my goal of learning a new technology skill once a week.

I Tag…

While that may sound ambitious, the truth is that it will probably be easy. There are lots of little possibilities that qualify. Last week’s tech skill was sending text messages to a cell phone using a computer. I discovered that there are a number of websites that will send text messages from your computer to a cell phone for free:

• Online Text Messaging
• Txt2Day
• SMS Everywhere
• txtDrop

Be forewarned that the process of converting an email into a text message takes place at the cell phone holder’s service provider – and it can take about an hour. That’s how long it took for my wife’s cell phone to get my message.

Next up? Tomorrow I’m going to learn to use the new voter registrar software that has replaced the paper poll books in Virginia. I’m a precinct chief in Virginia and I have to be at the polling place with a couple of laptops (instead of the old paper list of voters) and some voting machines at 5am.

Future plans include learning to use some screen capture software (which is essential for presentations on some topics) and attending a workshop on the new virtual desktop (WebTop) that the West Virginia Department of Education is providing for teachers. I’m sure I’ll come up with other ideas…