Shipley+School +Rose+DiBenedetto+Wendy+Eiteljorg+and+Debra+Finger

One of our Upper School teachers received professional development support for summer work - a University of Pennsylvania program in Japan. As an alternative to a presentation or newsletter article on her experience, she created a ning at @http://japanshipley21c.ning.com/ This allowed her to share her 3 week experience in “real-time” with allowed members of the Shipley community – we all went along for the ride! The ning includes photos, videos and some essays on Japanese society, culture and history. As our final project for 2008-2009 PLP our team decided to create a 10 week experience for our faculty focused on web 2.0 tools that are used for collaboration – wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, podcasts and Skype. We created a ning for the an online portion of the professional development at [|http://shipleylc.ning.com]The byline for the ning is “The Shipley Learning Community is an electronic meeting of the minds where colleagues can share ideas and reflect on teaching practices.”
 * [[image:shipseal_withshadow.jpg]]1. Nings for Professional Development Communication and Collaboration ** Rose di Benedetto

This presentation will feature a [|wiki] that was created for the teachers in my school. We needed a place to house all the tech tips and links being sent via email so teachers could have one-stop shopping when they were looking for ways to integrate technology into their curriculum. This wiki has several features including a “How to” section for adding information and editing pages, annotated links to activities and resources by subject area, general resources to use throughout the day, examples of how classrooms are using web 2.0 tools and lots of ideas for what you can do in your own classroom right now.
 * 2.** **WIkis for Lower School** Debra Finger

3. **Blogs for Classroom Use** Wendy Eiteljorg I set up a blog for my 5th grade class using wordpress. It began as a new twist on homework and quickly became a vibrant place for discussions away from school. Over the course of the year, the students become more independent and the conversations on the blog became more student driven. We used the blog as a vrtual home for much of what went on all year. In addition to cutting down on paper use, the blog lead to the students sharing more ideas, writing more, getting a some more typing practice without realizing it, and learning how to participate in one version of an on-line community.