I finished teaching the first session of “Closing the Digital Divide: Integrating Technology in the Open Court Reading Program” at the Los Angeles County Office of Education along with Carolyn Daly of Tech4Learning this week.

This was a hands-on workshop to address how to integrate technology into OCR in ways which support curricular goals, promote higher level thinking and work towards closing the digital divide.

I personally found the experience to be very stimulating. Teachers who are willing to give up three days of their vacation and make the drive to Downey voluntarily because they want to integrate technology in their teaching are certainly a bright and motivated bunch.

It was also exciting to meet a few discussion board members who I previously knew only by their online handle, including the famous Bonnie Macadam of MrsMacadam.com, who created one of the earliest Open Court sites I found on the internet. It’s good to put faces to names and also find that they’re nice people. I was glad to know the feeling was mutual as feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

I hope to have some of the work that was created in the workshop online soon. It’s taking some time to digitize the movies for easy online viewing.

It’s not too late to attend the next workshop, though there may be a waiting list, in two weeks or find out how to bring this workshop to your school.