I attended the pre-conference workshop day and took the TIS/TRT strand. The first session was a panel discussion on "Surviving the TIS/TRT Experience". Most of the schools, big or small, are finding the same difficulties and the same successes, so that was good to hear. We're all in the same big boat apparently! One of the issues mentioned was keeping students focused and one of the panelists said we should never forget we're in the business of educating students, not promoting technology. Also, it is important teachers and technicians work together - technicians must understand the classroom, not just the technology side. One other important point was we should train teachers first so they feel very comfortable with using the technology before they try to use it with students. One idea was to allow the technician to co-teach a lesson integrating technology, not just allow the TIS or TRT to co-teach. Another idea was to consider having short PDs twice a month - offering a single-focus training each time. For example, have an after-school session on document cameras or have a before-school session on a spreadsheet program with the focus of making charts. Another panelist mentioned administrators should also be using and modeling technology. Otherwise, how can they do walkthroughs and evaluations appropriately? An emphasis was to not just give staff a Website or tech tool and leave them on their own, but rather to show them how and where they can use it. My thought after this session was "sit and get" which is an old adage which implies the person actually "gets" what we are teaching. Instead, what we usually do in technology is "show and go" - we tend to show them a cool tool and them leave them on their own. One last thought for this session was to let the instruction and curriculum drive the selection of the tech tool you use, not the reverse. Too many of us are getting on the bandwagon and purchasing the latest and greatest tech tool and then don't have a way to utilize them fully and they end up in a closet or corner somewhere. So, be careful what you purchase and make sure you have a solid purpose for the purchase. Don't just buy the tool because it's cool!
The second session was on comparison shopping and many hand-held and personal devices were discussed. There are so many to choose from and pros and cons of each were given. Again, though, the emphasis was on considering the apps and features you want before you buy. The suggestion was to talk with teachers about what they want to do and then purchase the most appropriate device.
The third session was on social networking and the dangers of having too much information available online. Jim McKinney was the presenter and he was so interesting, I decided to take two more sessions from him. I will reserve that information for next week's blog entry.
The last session of the day was a tech resource smackdown. Various people showed quick Websites and apps. I will end this week's entry with some of those tools:
Isle of Tune - This is a universal app for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and can also be played online. The descripion says "Create musical journeys from street layouts. Roadside elements are your instruments and cars are the players." You can browse shared tunes others have created or create an island all your own. I would suggest you take a look at some of the shared tunes to start to give you some ideas of what can be done. This would be a great app/site to use in a music classroom!
TourWrist - Have you ever wished you could take a panoramic shot of something but didn't have the special camera or lens to do so? Now you can! You can shoot panoramas with your phone or camera. They have a video which shows you how it works. It really is fascinating. I haven't had time to really explore this in depth, but from what I understand the general idea is that you take lots of photos and they are then seamlessly put together to make a panoramic view - all around, up and down. Neat!
OnLive Desktop - Unleash your Tablet. This is what the Website says as it offers both an iPad app and an Android app. Supposedly you can create and revise Microsoft Office (r) elements like PowerPoint(r) and Word(r). Again, I haven't had time to get this app and see what it's all about, but if it does what it says, it could prove to be an invaluable tool. (Hint: You must go the actual Website and create an account there before you can access the app.)
ClassDojo - This claims to be real-time behavior management. According to the site, you can improve student behavior and engagement by awarding and recording real-time feedback. You can print or e-mail behavior reports to easily engage parents and staff. Save time by recording behaviors and accomplishments right in class with just one click. Once you register (it's free), you can take a tour of how it works, using a demo class. Remember the old method of putting a name on the board and putting hash marks as the day progressed? This is an online version. You can set up your class and then award either positive or negative marks. For example, under positive you can award a point for Participation, Helping others, Creativity, Great insight, Hard work or Presentation. Under negative you can subtract a point for Disruption, Late, No homework, Disrespect, Interrupting or Out of chair. If you have a smartphone, tablet or iPod Touch, you can use the device as a remote control which allows you to award points from anywhere. The most interesting aspect of this to me is the Report Cards feature. When you finish the day (or the class), you can go to this section and see a visual of positive/negative performance overall for the entire class (no names). This could really be a incentive if you were going to reward an entire class in some way - for example, if we have 90% positive awards, we'll not have math homework on Friday this week. You can also e-mail the report cards to the parents of individual students by entering their e-mail addresses.
HowJSay - A free online talking dictionary of English pronunciation. Simply type in a word and hear the pronunciation. I tried to stump it by entering "supercalifragilistic" and it worked! Pretty neat tool, especially for English language learners.
These are just a few of the apps and sites mentioned and hopefully you will find something you can use in your classroom. Have a great week and I look forward to sharing information from the sessions by Jim McKinney next week. I will leave you with a couple of quotes from Scott McLeod who was the guest speaker for the conference . . .
We used to be passive receivers, now we're active producers.
What once was local is now global.
What once was local is now global.
