Can you believe another year is about to begin? I am finding out that the older I get, the faster the years seem to go. Maybe by writing this post I can see what seemed to zoom by me as I traveled through 2011.
January
Started the 30 Day Blogger Challenge hosted by Edublogs (unfortunately I didn't complete it), but I learned how to add pages to my blog.
I presented a session for the Greater New Orleans Teachers of Mathematics called Being Better at Math.
February
My Skype buddy, Jan Wells, and I presented for Classroom 2.0 Live. We took our presentation Seeds to Success with Skype and had a wonderful time interacting with the live audience during this session. You can access the archive of the session here.
March
I was invited by Jeanne McQueen to be a moderator of #4thchat. I was thrilled to join the team of Jeanne, Nancy Carroll, and Justin Stortz on March 21 and have had a wonderful year of being a moderator for this lively chat each week. Check out the archives and get more information here.
Celebrated my 6oth birthday.
April
I presented virtually by using the screensharing feature of Skype to educators attending InnovatED in Memphis, Tennessee.
May
I was invited to write a guest blog post for BrainPOP. Then I was invited to do a webinar for BrainPOP based on my post. The archived webinar can be accessed here.
I started the #JJAProject with some of my Twitter friends.
June
Thanks to Ken Shelton, I was hired to present to the Tech Coordinators for Region 8 in Monroe, Louisiana. You can read all about this event here.
Made plans to help Newbies at ISTE11 with my friend, Beth Still.
Arrived in Philadelphia in time to attend EduBloggerCon. I love this unconference and I even facilitated a session on blogging with elementary students. I was stunned when I realized my students' best commenter was sitting there in front of me. I had to stop and give JoAnn Jacobs a huge hug. My roommate and fellow JPPSS educator, Tinashe Blanchet, and I had some great late night chats.
During my ISTE days I presented on a panel with Beth Still, George Couros, Josh Allen, and Jason Schrage entitled Get Ready, Get Set, Get Organized. I was approached by some of the METC organizers and invited to present for them in February of 2012.
July
Jan, Len Horn, Kristen Robertson, and I did a two hour presentation called More Seeds to Success with Skype for teachers in South Africa attending the INTEL ICT in the Classroom 2011 Conference.
I was an organizer of EdCamp Louisiana which took place on the campus of UNO on Saturday, July 9. It was a great day and I was thrilled that Dr. John Hadley Strange and some of his students from the University of South Alabama attended.
I flew to San Diego that same evening to attend the Discovery Educator Network Summer Institute (DENSI). I couldn't believe that I was finally going to meet Jen Wagner, one of my first online mentors, face to face. She picked me up from the airport and got me to my dorm room that I shared with Jeannine Shields. It was a wonderful week of learning and bonding with other DEN members.
I was thrilled to present with William Chamberlain about the Power of the #comments4kids Hashtag for Reform Symposium 3. You can access the archive here.
August
Began the 2011-2012 school year by doing presentations for other teachers in my district at our inservice day. One of my presentations was called Using the 4C's in Math. I also presented to the 3-5 grade math teachers at my school on tools to help cover our GLEs (grade level expectations).
Began the year with an About Me lesson I shared with my PLN on Twitter.
I wrote about our great first week of school here.
September
My first attempt at flipping my classroom I shared here.
We celebrated Constitution Day with my friend, James Adams, being our guest speaker.
We connected and collaborated with my friend, David Craig's class. I wrote about it here.
October
I also got to connect with my friend, Joan Young, as we participated in our first Mystery Skype Call.
My students and I hosted a Blog Commenting Party for parents.
We celebrated anti-bullying month by having Joey King, the star of Ramona and Beezus, Skype into our classroom.
Returned to Monroe and did three presentations for LATM (Louisiana Association of Teachers of Mathematics). Shared the ride and a room with Tinashe again. We had a great time.
I was very surprised to find out my blog was mentioned on page four in Open Book: A K-12 Tech Playbook for Teachers by Dell.com/Connected Classroom. I wrote about it here.
November
I presented three session at LaCUE, which was held in New Orleans this year. One of my presenting nightmares came true when I lost Internet connection for the last hour of an hour and a half hands-on session. Everyone of the participants applauded how well I handled the situation.
Erica Shepherd, another fourth grade teacher in my district, and I co-presented from Paper Blogs to the World at LaCUE. Read about it on Erica's blog.
December
Jan Wells and I presented for the K12 Online Conference again this year. Our presentation, Playing with the 4C's in an Elementary Classroom can be viewed here.
Found out I'll be presenting on a panel again at ISTE12 in San Diego in June and will be spending a week in a fantastic house with some great members of my PLN. WooHoo and thank you, Beth.
I was nominated for the EduBlog Award as Best Individual Tweeter.
I graduated from Southeastern Louisiana University with a Master's in Educational Technology Leadership. Here is my portfolio of the courses I took.
Wow, what a great year! What were the highlights of your 2011?
