My favorite part of the conference was the informal poster sessions. I enjoyed the presentation on digital portfolios. I have a handout of a middle school and high school version and thought this would be a great way for our students to reflect and review their work. In addition, the high school version ties directly to the district’s expectations of graduates. I find it a useful tool in my graduate work. It would also be a great to have students see their progress as a learner from the beginning to the end of the year! As a teacher, I understand that we have an Angel repository. Does Angel allow students to store documents as a repository?
Digital Portfolio
Jul 14
Global perspectives
Jul 14
Conferences provide forums where you can get many ideas from the people you meet and the presentations you attend. I went to a session ‘Kids: Making a Difference, Changing the World’ and after reviewed their website www.rockourworld.org . Although I found some of the subject matter “fluffy”, I got some great ideas about using Skype or technology means to global issues that are important to kids. It would be a great flex activity to look at an environmental issue impacting the world, such as discussing the decrease of the rain forests and have students come up with ways to mitigate this problem.
Students from across the world could brainstorm ideas, and write letters or proposals on public policy measures that could be implemented. Students could also think about how the rainforest can impact their own country. This would incorporate science, language arts and social studies. It would be interesting to have students’ perspectives shared across the world and open students’ eyes to a shared goal and understanding of the importance of working together.
Another session - National Archives
http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/
Digital vault – http://www.digitalvaults.org/# —This is similar to the FCCPS VAULT! Create a poster, games and a video using primary sources online.
What a way to end my first NECC Experience with a great BYOL on Digital Citizenship. Although the technology leaders have discussed Internet Safety and Technology Literacy this year…Digital Citizenship was not really part of the discussion….it will be and now I can chime in with something intelligent (doesn’t happen very much for me…but I love meetings!) because I was presented with resource after resource from three presenter that knew their stuff.
This session featured more “Backchanneling” with a resource called - http://www.chatzy.com/. I loved it, but did I hear what the presenters were saying…somewhat…no, not really! Although this could be a helpful tool in the classroom…maybe! I was impressed how the presenters would answer questions, via Chatzy. While the other presenters were presenting. It was also cool to have everyone in the room have the ability to share links of what they are doing with Internet Safety & Digital Citizenship at their schools.
I did walk away with a lot of stuff I plan on using as a teacher and plan to share with others who see the importance of preparing our kids (no matter how young or how much social studies they need to learn) to members of a global online society.
BTW-I also Twittered all the links that were shared and freaked out a few of my twitter followers…I twittered more in that hour then usually twitter in a month.
1- Diigo (http://www.diigo.com/) - Delicious who?!?! This social bookmarking resource rules. You can create groups and share out your llinks…Please join my EdTEch Group @http://groups.diigo.com/groups/fccps_ed_tech
2- Woogi World (http://www.woogiworld.com/) - Like Club Penguin (Social Network for kids) without the Disney vibe. Still need e-mail accounts register (so a site to promote with fams).
3- SecretBuilders (http://www.secretbuilders.com/) - Second Life/Worlds of Warcraft for kids - Soon will have a education version where accounts can be created.
4- Dizzywood (http://www.dizzywood.com/) - Virtual world for teens…free to start by then they get with monthly fees to get the cool stuff
5- Adina’s Deck (http://www.adinasdeck.com/) - Great DVDs for middle and high
6- Digiteen Project (http://digiteen09-2.flatclassroomproject.org/) - Awesome resource for middle schools working in a global collaboration. Lists the 9 Digital Elements of Citizenship
a. Access
b. Communication
c. Literacy
d. Security & Safety
e. Etiquette
f. Rights & Responsibilities
g. Law
h. Health & Wellness
i. Commerce
7- DigiParent (http://digiparent.ning.com/) - A great way to promote social networking with parents…making them join and social network.
8- http://sites.google.com/site/vcisresources/Home/resources-for-students/ru-cybersafe - A great poster for the lab and classroom-I hear that Sparrgrove has a great poster printer!
9- Teacher Wiki - http://southozsue.wikispaces.com/Digital+Citizenship - great stuff
10- Teacher (from Illinois) Wiki - http://mrsa.wikispaces.com/Internet%20Safety%20Curriculum%20Resources - VA required Internet Safety to be taught in all schools in 2006…Illinois in 2009
11- Teacher Wiki - http://ad4dcss.wikispaces.com/ -
12- Okay…Okay, who is going to weed through this stuff for the good stuff?!
I love sessions that make you think and give you work to do…highlighting these resources with the right teachers at the right time is now the challenge.
Tammy Worcester
Jul 1
Apparently this woman is awesome! I tried to see her presentation on google applications but the line was ridiculously long and I didn’t get a chance to make it in. However, I was told to go to her website and apparently she has the entire presentation online with additional bonus information and resources.
If you are interested go to http://tammyworcester.com and there will be tons of resources for you to look at. If you click on the Trainings/Handouts tab at the top, you can find the “NECC” Conference link to all of her presentations that she did for this week. If you click on her “Internet Resources” tab, she has lots of different categories with tons of websites for you to play with. The categories range from content area to general technology in the classroom. I think everyone could find a few things that would be really helpful and interesting from her website.
Formative Feedback
Jul 1
I found this presentation to be extremely boring and the presenter used very little technology. However i was able to take some ideas and reflect on the presentation which I found to be more useful than the actual presentation itself.
The digital dropbox would be beneficial in Angel for formative assessment. This would allow for students to express their opinion about a topic, respond to a question, or solve a problem. All of these would great examples of formative feedback using technology. Students could use the computer lab or they could use the laptops to post. They could also make comments outside of school or afterschool hours by logging on to Angel.
Online quizzes would also be very beneficial in Angel as well. Students could get immediate feedback after taking the quiz because the answers would be given to them, with comments regarding their responses. This would be easy to set up for the teacher and it would be engaging for the students.
I am going to try to use these tools on Angel a lot more this year.
Technology Velcro
Jul 1
Making education stick beyond the test and making kids remember what we teach them.
This was a really cool presentation on how to engage students with the use of video, images, stories, and music. Below are some ideas on how to use these strategies in the classroom.
Big Ideas:
Looking for Connections to make ideas stick
• CHIMES: Connection, Humor, Images, Music, Emotion, Story, Senses
• Connection: Clouds that look like things we are familiar with
• Humor: Use comics, jokes, current events, real life situations
• Images: Students process images 60,000 times faster than text. Using image with narration increases recall and application.
-Cool Idea: Have an image up on the projector as a warm-up to get students focused and interested from the start
-Cool Idea: Do a “What am I?” by giving clues for a warm-up using a picture as well (can use Hyperstudio or PowerPoint)
• Music: Have a song that pertains to lesson for the day when students walk into class. It sets a tone and interests student.
• Emotion: Some words are worth 1,000 pictures (love, death, etc)
• Story: Share personal experiences; attach lessons to personal stories. Ask students first what they think a possible story may be from a picture to get them interested and engaged.
• Senses: touching manipulates, hearing voiceover or music, etc.
I started early and ended late today.
I attended one session on iPhone Apps and I touch Apps. I am not sure I got much educational value out of this but I hope to increase my productivity with some of the tools.
I was disappointed on my ISTE publishing sessions; however, I caught up with a couple of people I met while working on my doctorate. I guess networking is always good.
Listened to a Loundon person talk about thier ITRT program and the abundance of Professional Development that they offer. Steve and Brett, maybe we should have our own PD meetings??
Celebrated Moby turning 10. I was very disappointed.
I went to CRSTE (capital area society technology in education) meeting and reception. I am not impressed yet. Big ideas but no talk on how to accomplish big ideas.
So today is the day that I get the power of Twitter. It is great to “listen” in to other presentations from wherever I happen to be. I got suckered into the HP/Microsoft Twitter Game. Most of the people working in those booths did not know the answers.
I think there should be a new website, like rate your teacher.com, that let’s attendees rate the knowledge of the sales people. I met one fantatic person at Tech Smith who taught me Camtasia in 10 minutes. At microsoft I met nother person who had no idea about anything and admitted just that.
Freebies for the day….Powerschool T-shirt, 2 other t-shirts, autographed copy of Alan November’s book, brainpop cookie, pens, sticky notes.
Tomorrow…2nd life BYOL, my own poster presentation (2 hours- yikes), and then I am outta there (unless the exhibit hall sucks me in).
iPodTouch
Jun 30
I went to this seminar on how to enhance learning using the iPod Touch in high hopes of how to really get the ball rolling with new innovative ways of incorporating technology into the classroom–i mean after all a collegeis requiring all students to have an iPod touch/iPhone.
Sadly, i was quite disappointed. It demonstrated how to use the iPod touch in math. The only way they demonstrated the use for itouch was for playing games. The presenters mentioned that the students could keep a log of their scores and what they got wrong and which problems they were having trouble with for reference for the student and teacher. But then that brings back the paper/pencil concept, that i feel could be eliminated. (Email?/some sort of app that allows them to keep track on the itouch?/Instant data?) Then the presenters said that when they used these in a classroom they disabled the Internet option all together. Why? (other than giving the obvious reasons)
I expected a lot out of this seminar, and don’t get me wrong i did get good ideas, for instance, unitedstreaming videos can be uploaded on to the itouch. This can lead to enrichment activities or different stations where students can go and watch a video about a topic studied or even create a video and upload it on to the itouch for peer teaching. Then another thought hit me–podcasts. A great way to spice up a project or lesson.
So i guess my question is has anyone seen or read about how the itouch has been effectiviely used in the classroom or have any brainstorming ideas on how to get the ball rolling with an iPod touch?
Oh, and another thing i picked up from a person’s question was that once you pay for an app, you only pay for it once and can sync it to all student devices. Think about .99-1.99 (low end)for a game/app/what have you, instead of hundreds?-despite the fact that you have to buy the itouch as well. (Am i the only one that didn’t know that, considering i have a class set of iPod touches readily available–i wish.)
First let me say that ANGEL rules! We are lucky to finally have a LMS at FCCPS (regardless of what the future wrapping with be, ANGELboard?). The Blogging tool in ANGEL is a good way to get started, but you will quickly find how limited it is. Blogging should replace what we are doing with kids in ANGEL, it can only improve it.
Blogging…why isn’t everyone blogging? What if blogging replaced the need to send Newsletters home? Blogs can increase the information shared with parents to decrease the numbers of e-mails with questions (less e-mail?!?! Is that possible?). Finding the time is the one aspect that is hard to argue against. If time is a factor for you, ask yourself the question…what can it replace? John did a great job of presenting this question in this presentation..
At the BYOL on Tuesday called Best Practices for Teacher Blogging lead by educational technology leader John Hendron (Twitter – hendron) from Goochland County Public Schools, I was inspired by what he was sharing. His passion for education blogging was infectious (although a few people we quickly lost…a lot of tech resources).
John started the session with sharing a very cool tool that allowed the multi-taskers in the room to communicate with others in the room to extend their knowledge…it is called;
Web Tool of the conference - Today’s Meet - http://todaysmeet.com/
As the lecture went on, teachers where asking other questions and their peers were answering them. For example, John mentioned that the PPT was available on the Goochland website, seconds later a teacher in the room posted the link. Talk about turning some of the power for learning to the students.
The main focus of the presentation was the 10 Best Practices for blogging.
Blogs that were shared increase my NetVibes page (pulling the RSS feeds) and increase my daily reading…awesome! I encourage everyone to check them out a find a few to follow regularly.
PowerSchool/PowerTeacher - http://blogs.glnd.k12.va.us/teachers/jbocrie/
History & Technology - http://historytech.wordpress.com/
Educational Insanity - http://edinsanity.com/
Tech Salad - http://blogs.glnd.k12.va.us/teachers/bcantor/
Digital Photography & Graphics - http://blogs.glnd.k12.va.us/teachers/kberry/
Middle School Technology - http://pwoessner.com/
?? QUESTIONS ??
? - Is FCCPS a future home for future bloggers? What do the NECC instructional leaders think?
? - Many of you are blogging on FCCPS@NECC..would you create your own?
? - What if FCCPS gave you access, training, and support for blogging…would you take it on?
If you are blogging, share tips.
SMART-Science
Jun 30
SMART offered sessions on numerous topics-one being Science.
Highlights:
- The game Operation: Interactive game where you can have student piece together the parts of a heart. Quick warm-up activity or as a station in a possible round robin review day. Looking forward to browsing the galleries for other games.
- Templates to notes and games are found in the gallery section of your SMART notebook.
- For L.A. teachers and all teachers, that had these anagram games where the students had to ”unjumble” the word by dragging the letters around given only a picture clue as hint. They also need to beat the clock, they get more time with word they get.
In short, Smart Board is this huge medium where you are able to incorporate technology into your daily lesson plan. Learned some cool tricks with the smartboard to help enhance the learning of science.