First beginning i-Workshop ended

I just finished a workshop yesterday with a group of 13 educators that admittedly were beginners with the Web 2.0 concept and applications. It went much better that I originally thought, but I would attribute that to a great, devoted and patient group of educators. Certainly, they will admit that they did not walk away as experts, but who really can admit that they are experts in Web 2.0 applications -- new apps pop up all the time. I do believe they did walk away with a better sense of time and skills needed to properly utilize these types of tools.

We called this a workshop, where the attendees really participate, contribute and learn from one another (rather than "sit and get" from an instructor). But a small part of the workshop actually happened in the same room, in the standard 6-8 hour time frame. Rather, the bulk of participation was spread over 12 days. Attendees contributed via wiki pages and blogs. So I guess I'm looking for a different name other than workshop... got to work on that. Maybe putting the "i" in front of it making it an i-Workshop is the obvious answer...not very original... suggestions welcomed.

In this i-Workshop, they captured their knowledge as a group much different that they would have in an intense 6-8 hour session. They each had the opportunity to learn and contribute at their own pace, going beyond off the cuff ideas, and being able to share deeper thoughts and concepts to determine which of these types of tools are appropriate for the classroom.

When September rolls around, they won't need to be looking for the scraps of paper where they wrote all these ideas and URLs. They can click on their saved bookmarks, refreshing their minds with the wiki pages to which they all made contributions. The URLs don't need to be retyped into their web browser--a single click on a link of the wiki page will render the great web site discovered in the workshop. Revisiting the recorded discussions they had about their wiki pages also brings back the reasons for the concluded facts.. The results is much richer, because they were not pressured to reach into their minds in an abbreviated 6 hour time frame. In fact, during the final day's face-2-face meeting, they were interested to continue contributions to the wiki http://bfurst-web20.wikispaces.com/.

We are looking to do another beginning session and some great ideas for follow-up workshops were discussed... ideas welcomed... so stay tuned.