I just thought I'd give you an update on what the Yahoo! Teachers team has been up to the last few hectic weeks!
June 17: We held a Yahoo! Teachers workshop for teachers in the San Jose/Evergreen School District. This was a great event and they were really impressed with Yahoo! Teachers and the Gobbler.
June 22: The entire Yahoo! Teachers team headed to Atlanta to attend NECC 2007! This is the largest educational computing conference in the country and we met teachers from all over the country.
Our booth was jammed packed with teachers wanting to see the Gobbler in action! This was a great week and our first big showing of Yahoo! for Teachers!
We had a great time in Atlanta. Bill's edict is that we "eat local" when we travel. One of the highlights of the trip was our team dinner at Gladys Knight Chicken and Waffles. We were a little tired and slap happy, so this made it even more fun.
We had a great bounty of Southern goodness on our table: fried chicken, waffles, collard greens, mac and cheese, fried corn, oh fresh lima beans and of course sweet tea! Being Yahoos, the moment our food arrived we whipped out our cameras so we could Flickr our food before we ate it!
July 2: Off to the windy city! Our Yahoo! Teachers Chicago workshop was held at the University of Chicago. We had a wonderful group of teachers from around Illinois attend the workshop. We also had several teachers from NECC 2007 come to the workshop. We were hoping for an Obama sighting, but sadly we struck out.
One of the most amazing new Yahoo! Teachers drove all the way from Alabama to attend the workshop. Karon and I were floored and honored that she would make that long drive to learn more about Yahoo! for Teachers. Again, we had some terrific projects come out of this workshop.
July 11: The Big Apple welcomed Yahoo! Teachers and we held two workshops at the NYC Yahoo! HQ. This was an amazing cadre of educators from all over the region. Teachers came from Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
We met several educators who are blogging about technology in the classroom and using social media in interesting and innovative ways to support learning in the classroom.
We were also thrilled to have Sue Wright and Greg Crum join us at our NYC workshops. They were great advocates for Yahoo! Teachers and they had a great time meeting colleagues from the other side of the country! Thanks Greg and Sue!
July 13: After a whirlwind couple of days in NYC, Karon and I headed off to Washington D.C. to present Yahoo! for Teachers to the American Federation of Teachers. Our group of teachers hailed from Minnesota, Montana, DC, Virginia and New York.
In fact, we had standing room only and left with a long list of teachers who want to sign up as alpha teachers. We were thrilled to have such a positive reception from the AFT community.
Speaking of the AFT, they have a lot of great resources on their site, including resources to help educators teach about the crisis in Darfur.
July 16: Karon and I headed to San Francisco to attend the YPulse Mashup. This is a conference that focuses around how tweens and teens use technology.
We were thrilled to share Yahoo! Teachers with the Mashup crowd and show how educators can use Yahoo! Teachers to connect with other teachers and gain the skills and confidence they need to use 21st century tools in their classrooms.
We had the honor to meet with Lisa and Pearl from the Schwab Learning Foundation. This is a wonderful organization that provides information and resources to teachers/kids/parents on learning difficulties (LD).
They have a wonderful site, including an online library, full of articles, research and other information to help students with learning difficulties. They have a special site for kids called, SparkTop, where kids with LD can come and connect with other kids
We also presented Ben Wilkoff, a teacher from Denver, Colorado, with the first Yahoo! Teachers/Edutopia Totally Wired Teacher Award. Congrats to Ben!
July 17: Hey Austin! Here we come.......Wendy Heller, Karon and I headed off to Austin to hold a workshop at the University of Texas @ Austin. Wow. Talk about totally wired! The teachers at the Austin workshop were very tech savvy and caught the vision of Yahoo! Teachers in a big, big way.
Then again, everything--including vision--is big in Texas!
All work and no play? No way. While in Austin we checked out the Story of Texas state history museum and tracked down the best BBQ join in Austin. Where? That would be Iron Works. Yum. Yum. Yum.
Where next? That would be San Diego! On Saturday we will be holding our final summer workshop at the Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego.
We come off this workshop and conference tour with a new found appreciation for all the wonderful educators out there who are striving every day in the classroom to help their students acquire the knowledge and skills they will need to be contributing members of society.
Stay tuned, we are just getting started.......
Cheers!
Derek, Karon and the entire Yahoo! Teachers team
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