ITS Meeting - November 2005

This is a post regarding our Instructional Technology Specialist (ITS) Town meeting held November 4th at our new Monroe #1 BOCES technology services building. We took a fifty cent tour of the new facility, got to know each other a bit more, and shared our thoughts about how we might build a better community for the ITS group.

There seemed to be a consensus that we start by trying a blog designed specifically for the ITS members. In the very near future we will set up a blog specific to our community. In the meantime, we will be using our blogs to make our posts.

As I stated in the meeting, one thing that helped me transition quickly into my new position was the use of RSS feeds. The idea and power behind it being that users don't have to take time to search for news or content. It is researched and delivered, like the Sunday paper, to the user. Granted, the user has to visit or use their news aggregator to read the delivered content. We have used Bloglines.com as our aggregator and I have set it as my home page when I open up my FireFox browser.

I hope that you all got something out of us sharing the GIS items. This is such powerful technology we could do all day workshops on each tool that we touched upon. Please contact us if you have any questions about GIS in education. I found a blog related to Google Earth that shares some great resources and comes up with some interesting uses for Google Earth. Though not all are relevant to education, they can help trigger ideas.

We will notify the ITS community as soon as the blog is live. Thanks for your patience.