“If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.” ~ Mark Twain

Ever wonder what the inside of a middle aged woman's brain looks like after two days of "professional development" designed to address "Best use of new technology to engage students and increase achievement Grades K-8"?

This is what it looks like:

Like a sea of post-it notes, like an ocean of ideas, like a flood tide of inspiration, like a river of opportunities, like a lake of possibilities....well, you get the idea.  In case you are wondering, the post-it notes were creating using an App and a cloud based website called Linoit.  You can find it on the web at www.linoit.com.   It's a very cool product that let's you create a "board" of sticky notes.  Best of all, the board can be worked on collaboratively by multiple users at the same time.  Just think about that for a minute.  Picture this tool being used by a group of students brainstorming a project like the Connecticut report.  One color post it could be for historical data, one color for state symbols, one color for important locations, one color for products and industries, one for geographical information, etc...  Each group can be contributing to the board and the teacher can see who is contributing by the number of colored post its for each group.  Easy to see who is working hard and who needs to be encouraged to work a little bit harder.  Imagine how helpful it would be for these students to refer to this board at home when writing their report.

"Lino" is a great tool for collaborative brainstorming and for creative presentation of notes and organizing thoughts.   Like my notes above.  The section of my board above is just a visual snippet of the whole board I'll be sharing with the rest of our faculty and letting them use to explore all the websites and apps I learned about at my two day conference in Cromwell.  If you position your cursor inside the board, you should be able to scroll around and see more of my notes.  I hope you will give it a try. It was a fabulous opportunity and I learned so much.  Just wait until you see ---- "stained glass" photo collages,  sock puppets that talk, back channels, shared screens...... Honestly, even holding a cat by its tail would pale by comparison to the wonders I have seen.