The room was literally shaking as we endured the wrath of a 5.8 earthquake in the middle of Henrico’s New Teacher Academy. Yet, the shaking, rattling, and rolling of the earth beneath us didn’t stop the third grade teachers from gaining the benefits of all that my partner, David Clough, and I had to share that day. Our session’s title, Thewy Third Thaumaturge” is a tongue twister that makes me giggle every time I say it. However, as odd as it sounds, it does have a legitimate meaning. Just consult with Merriam-Webster, put the definitions together, and then it will all make sense. 
Thewy Third Thaumaturge lasted for four hours, so David and I decided to rock the day with dance music, glow sticks, a disco ball, door prizes, and LOTS of chocolate! Yes, learning can be fun for adults too! It was interesting how the other sessions thought the earthquake was merely our music vibrating the building at first. I guess that shows just how much fun we had at times. Our ideas shared during the first half of the session can be found on this website. The second half of the day we allowed the teachers to use dotvoting.org to choose their topics so we could tailor our smaller group rotations to meet their needs. Yes, we differentiate for adults too! The topics they chose were: setting up their blogs as web pages, iMovie, Garageband, and Photobooth.
One cool activity we did was in using the photo sharing web site Yogile. It allows the user to upload pictures to one web page. Once the photos are all uploaded, they can be viewed as a slideshow or gallery. Check out ours here! If you would prefer the pictures to be displayed in book form, check out Keepsy. You can see our sample here.
Even with the earthquake, the day was a blast and the new third grade teachers left with lots of ideas for technology integration into their instruction.
