Mr John Evans and a Golden Goal!

On Wednesday February 20th, we welcomed John Evans to our ICT class. John is a web technologies consultant with Manitoba Education. In the short time he had to present to us, he filled us in on a ton of resources and different ways to expand our Professional Learning Network. We discussed PLN's last year in Internet for Educators, and I don't think anything has changed since the PLN I created last year. But today, Mr. Evans introduced something that I may need to add.

                  (My PLN Jan 2013)

John gave the class a tour of the program called Maple, which is a Professional Learning Network tool solely built for teachers. Maple (MB professional learning environment) was created to help MB teachers share resources just by a click of the mouse. If you come across something that is cool to use in a lesson, you can share it by posting it in a particular group on Maple. Also, if you are in need of some ideas for a lesson, other teachers in the province with a Maple membership can hook you up. The Maple website also consists of many curriculum documents and groups that cover a wide range of topics. It definitely looks like it would be easy to navigate, which is a huge plus for someone like myself. I really liked the idea of your own personal library where every resource I find I can just add it right to my library; this way it is all going to one place.

I want to thank John Evans for braving the winter roads and coming out to speak with us. I am looking forward to using MAPLE in the future and taking advantage of everything it offers.

P.S. I will always remember where I was when Women's Canadian Olympic Hockey Team scored in overtime to win the gold medal over the United States. That was a ton of fun. Go Canada Go.

Johns Website: http://joevans.pbworks.com