Thanks To My PLN, There Will ALWAYS Be a Plan "B"

So, what do you do when the "Dog and Pony Show" lesson you have planned just doesn't work? You have a back up plan. All good teachers know you should always have a good "Plan B." Well, it happened to me recently as we were about to shoot a segment of . A few days prior, in preparation for the segment, I was checking out (an online, one-push audio publishing app) and I even had lots of great educators checking it out with me. and my PLN, as awesome as they are, even added their "Vocaroos" in the comments explaining how they thought Vocaroo could be used in a classroom situation. It was the perfect storm.

Enter that morning, and boot up the computers and wouldn't you know it? The Vocaroos just wouldn't load. The site wasn't blocked but something with a port being not opened or something and well, it just wasn't going to work for us. This is not that uncommon at our studio, being within the school district firewall (even with expanded firewall access) we still run into issues.

So, now we are scheduled to start taping in about 45 minutes and I've got nothing else prepared. (So much for the "good teachers" mention above.) I quickly thumbed through my bookmarks hoping to find something I'd tossed in there for a future segment, but that wouldn't require much preparation and I found something that had been gathering dust for quite some time. Found it; An online, free, white-board (sorta) collaborative environment.

I took a quick look at Stixy and liked how it you can easily create a collaborative workspace with sticky notes, pictures, calendar items and documents and no login required! I quickly threw out a asking my PLN to please rescue me and come join me in my Stixy room and add some content. Well, I was not disappointed! Thank you to all who took the time to help me learn about Stixy "on the spot" and helped make my "Plan B" a terrific spot!

Watch, learn and you won't be disappointed either!