I’ve also come away learning just as much as if I had traveled to a convention center or hotel.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I still love to travel and attend conferences for that face to face connection.  But, webinars certainly have their place, too.

Paul from P21 sent this note last night:

“I’ve already posted a discussion thread on the Cyber Summit (http://www.weareteachers.com/community/p21-cyber-summit) with your webinar title, so please feel free to post additional ideas, questions for discussion or links there for the community—As I said, we hope the conversation continues beyond the temporal confines of the 60 minute webinar. In that discussion post, you’ll find a PDF of your slides as well as a link to the online recording of your webinar.”

The new adventure last night was that I was one of three co-presenters for the webinar.  I’d always been on the receiving end and so it was quite a switch to be on the other side of the slides.   I will have to give a great shout out to Paul with the P21 folks.  He made sure the technology worked and was pretty easy to use.  He walked us through every step of the way and his help was invaluable.  My co-presenter, Melissa Johnston who is a Doctoral Student from Florida State University and Vince Barnes (my principal).  The time went fast as did my voice (I talk REALLY fast when I’m nervous sometimes).   I think we helped provide a little clearer picture of what P21 Skills look like at the elementary school age.

Our webinar was part of the P21 Cyber Summit this week.  Each day for the last couple of weeks P21 had anywhere from two to three webinars going on.  I know I was most honored for them to invite me to be a part of this.  I’m also glad that they archived all of these webinars because I wasn’t able to attend very many.  It will be good to go back and listen to some that I missed.

Here is an opportunity for some free professional development.  The Partnership for the 21st Century Skills (of which AASL is a member) is  hosting a series of webinars.  The Cyber Summit on 21st Century Readiness begins in late September and runs through early October.  There are a variety of topics and presenters at various times during the day and evening.  I’m most honored to have the opportunity to co-present one of the webinars with Melissa Johnston who is working on her PhD at Florida State University and my fabulous principal Vince Barnes.  We’re working now on our presentations.  Melissa and I have had some great Skype conversations and we’re excited to be talking about 21st Century Skills and elementary schools and elementary school libraries.  This is our first webinar presentation, but we’re up for a new adventure.  It should be a great time!  Fellow Hoosier, Leslie Preddy, is also presenting talking about Middle Schools and 21st Century Skills.  I’m sure her session is going to be amazing!   All of the webinar look like they will be filled with great content.  Now just have to see which ones I can fit into my schedule!

I probably should also tell you a couple things, so you’ll know my biases up front.

• School Library Monthly holds a special place in my heart because it was the very first magazine that ever published a piece of my writing.  As a matter of fact, they accepted and published it before I even had a job.  I wrote it based on an experience while student teaching and yet they still took it and published!
• I still write for the magazine (and others) and I’m honored that Kristin did select a few of my pieces for inclusion in her book.

I’m anxious to take some time and really reread all the wealth of ideas and knowledge in the book.  But, that will have to wait until after AASL Conference next week in Charlotte.   Wonder what new gem will show up on the doorstep next??  Hopefully it will be my new book as that is due out in just a few weeks!!!