Blogs on Teacher Leadership

Darren Draper, a technology specialist in Utah's Jordan School District, was getting ready to offer a professional-development course last fall about using social software in the classroom. Rather than a traditional sit-and-get workshop, he envisioned a more interactive experience in which teachers would use blogs, wikis, and the other Web 2.0 tools they would be learning about.

Anyone who has spent time in an isolated classroom understands why teacher collaboration makes such good sense. If you don't have time to share ideas or plan projects with colleagues, you miss out on opportunities to grow and learn as a teacher. And your students miss out on something important, too.

When I was in elementary school, physical education classes were unmemorable and uninspired. We played dodgeball, kickball -- the usual suspects. During my secondary school years, PE classes often consisted of alpha males dominating the field with headlong, undisciplined aggression while everyone else tried to participate without getting underfoot.

I'd like to share a Web site called LibriVox, which provides free, downloadable audiobooks from the public domain: Users download the audiobooks in MP3 format and listen to them on their computer or copy them onto an MP3 player.