A few weeks ago I had my first staff meeting training on the Mobi Interwrite pad. The meeting is supposed to take place at 8:15, which is 25 minutes earlier than our normal start time. The staff at my school is notorious for being late or not showing up for these earlier staff meetings. I asked the secretary to make an announcement to remind the staff the afternoon before the meeting took place. Well this didn't really seem to help. I had one person show up on time and several others show up a few minutes late. I made an annoucement for all staff to report to their meeting around 8:25 and then everyone else showed up.
After the slow start I think everything went pretty well. I introduced the software that went along with the Mobi and had everyone try to create things on the software. I had to troubleshoot with a few staff members and download some of the lessons from the software website. After that I passed out the two operating Mobi tablets that I had and let the staff test it out. This also went well but it was difficult not to have more of the Mobis so that each group could use them at the same time.
I did encouraged the staff to test of some of the lessons on their own or create a new document using the software. The nice thing was everyone already had the software on their computer and they could use it without having a Mobi. We also discovered that one staff member could use her ipad in place of the Mobi using a whiteboard app called splashpad. A few days after the meeting I received the two new Mobi pens I was waiting for. So next month I will have four operating Mobis and I will ask the other staff member to bring her ipad. I hope this will help to make the session more productive and interactive.
