Using Internet Tools to Maximize My Effectiveness Inside and Outside the Classroom

Earlier this morning I had a team meeting with two of my student research assistants before leaving for an off-campus meeting with my Schneider Consulting business partners, Jane and Greg Schneider. I gave these two student assistants three assignments (with the additional task of passing on these assignments to their remaining two team members who were scheduled to arrive at noon):

1. Develop for me a blog piece that evaluates the usefulness of  VoiceThread for us.
2. Think through ways we should participate in February 24th’s World Read Aloud Day.
3. Continue working on the ebooks we plan to publish in Kindle Format using Amazon’s Kindle Direct software. I am delighted that as I write this blog piece this evening all assignments were completed.

I praised them for the consistent excellence they were demonstrating in their work with me. In part, our success at working so well together is because we have developed certain habits that facilitate communication and work flow:

• Documenting the day’s work in a Day One journal application.
• Saving the day’s work on Google Drive where we all share access and editing privileges.
• Demonstrating the right balance between solving problems on their own with creative “workarounds” or insights and knowing when to seek my assistance.
• Learning together, using what we learn, and sharing it with others.
• Making time for reflection, celebration, and having fun.  I’m still laughing at the delightful reading that Alison and Lizzy shared with me today via a screen cast in a draft of a blog.

When Ariana and Tia ran into a bottleneck today which they could not circumvent, they promptly communicated the problem to me via email sending a screen cast documenting which computer they were using and exactly what problem they were having. Consequently, I was not only able to recommend a solution to the problem but I was also able to share the screen cast with one of my business partners and teach her about screencasting. How lucky I am to have the opportunity to work with, develop, and learn from such talented students.

Allow me to introduce one of my consulting partners, Jane Schneider, in her screen casting debut using Voilá. Today I introduced her to WordPress and to a WordPress guide my students are developing. I hope that Jane, Greg and I from time to time can  share with interested readers some of the work that our team does together.