I’m not going to try to relate all the many magical things that happened today at the Leyden Symposium. I don’t think I can do justice to the first two speakers of the day. First Jennie Magiera spoke about From Ideas to Action: Creating Tangible Transformation. There were many take aways from her talk and I only wish I had an hour after hearing her to sit quietly and reflect and to let it settle. One really important point I think for technology coaches is to tame our passion and begin with what the teacher needs and then later introduce more of our cuckoo ideas.  “What would your keynote be about?”, she asked us. All of us have something to share.

But I didn’t have an hour for reflection and before I knew it there was Jimmy Casas telling us we should “Strive to Make an Impact Everyday!” Jimmy doesn’t really have to strive to make an impact. It comes to him naturally and I loved his thoughts about creating a community within the school and how everyone at Bettendorf High School is included in the community no matter what their role within the school happens to be. For instance, take a peak at Joni Bruecken’s post on their blog to see what a secretary working in the attendance office had to share.

I attended the Automate Your Life with Time Saving Scripts which Jennie Magiera led during a morning session. I’m eager to try the formLimiter script along with the formRanger script. These could be used together within the old Google spreadsheets to cut off a number of participants to an event or a signup sheet and then to send an automated message to suggest they try another time or date.

The gelato truck appeared right on time and below is a photo of some of District 113 employees enjoying their dessert. The coconut flavor was voted the best by our table.

After lunch I attended Ryan Bretag’s session on Google+ Communities in the Classroom. He told us that all the students at Glenbrook High Schools receive a blog when they are freshmen. Their teachers create a Google Community for each of their classes. The students request to be a member of each of the communities. When the student writes a blog post he shares it with the appropriate community. So the student only needs one blog for all his classes but belongs to several communities. What a super idea!

Once again, thank you Leyden team.