Day Two

Went to 2 great sessions today. First up was about Apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I don't have either but several in my family do and I am often called on for tech support. Leslie Fisher facilitated this one too. She had a lot of useful information. Look on her website. Next up was Kathy Shrock. She had tips for Information Overload-something I'm beginning to feel. Her tips were helpful as well. Visit her site at http://kathyschrock.net/score/. I spent a few hours in the exhibits looking for info on projectors, printers, and digital cameras. Ran across a booth with free software online called kerpoof (www.kerpoof.com). It's kinda of an elementary version of Alice. Looks like something the younger students will like.

NECC Day One Summary

I meant to do daily updates - good intentions... I am going to summerize each day separately. On Monday, I went to a session on the state of Open Source software. It was a panel and was pretty boring but I did find some interesting info. The idea of shifting budget money from commercial software over to teacher training sounds like a great strategy for a Catholic school. Went to a session about integration - talked about LoTi Levels. Was reminded of Wordle and got a good quote - "What gets measured gets improved." Best session of the day was by Leslie Fisher. She had a gadget class with lots of info on free software and great hardware. Be sure to look on her website www.lesliefisher.com.

Idea Overload

I started my day in a workshop dealing with the top 10 technologies that educators should eagerly try to integrate across the curriculum. Here's a link to an explanation of those resources. The afternoon I spent time going back to narrow down some interests with various vendors for music notation software, projector/document camera bundles and accountability software for monitoring student performance. One of the many things that made my jaw drop today was the GradeCam company. Looking back on my limited use of Scan-tron, I would've given anything to have the aggregated data that GradeCam can give you in seconds! Needless to say after about 3 hours of gathering samples and information on nearly every product available, I couldn't bear the weight of my bag any longer!

A Step in the Digital Direction

A great first day in my opinion! I attended a workshop which addressed developing e-portfolios for staff and students using Google sites. The other workshop I attended used a software program called Pixie 2 to integrate digital storytelling into lessons. While not a free program there are a few open source programs that can do nearly the same thing. I'll post links to those later. I was really impressed in the exhibits by a 12 year old who was talking about Hyperstudio. If you've ever been a Mac user like myself, you probably cringe at the thought of those "stacks" again, but the program has been completely revamped and is awesome!

Construction Paper for the 21st Century

This year at NECC I wanted to attend some of the pre-conference workshops. My first workshop was Saturday morning entitled " Construction Paper for the 21st Century". Besides technical difficuilities for the first half hour, the session was great. We focused mainly on Google Docs and other Google Tools as well as Voicethread. I had heard of Voicethread but had never seen or used it. I really loved it and think it could be a great tool to share. All of the information can be found at the presenters website. I look foward to spending time looking over more resources from this website.

http://sites.google.com/site/digitalroberto/Home

A few highlights from the session:

Google Custom Search- we went over how to design a custom search for your students. Very cool! http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

Voicethread-loved this tool! You can upload and share images, documents, videos and people can make comments. I think this would be a great tool for colloboration. http://voicethread.com/
I am looking forward to sharing this tool at our fall trainings.

Tooble- this is a free tool so you can save YouTube videos. I have had many teachers share that they would like to show a YouTube Video but it is blocked at their school. Of course, there is Teacher Tube and other sites..but those sites do not always have the extensive collection. http://tooble.tv/

Lots more to come from this session!

DC- Here we come!

Almost ready to head to Washington, DC! I am looking forward to attending the workshops on Saturday and Sunday. I will be attending "Construction Paper for the 21st Century" and "Technology Coordinator Leadership Development". Safe travels to all who are headed to DC!

Starting to get ready for NECC 2009!

The National Educational Computer Conference is going to be here before I know it! I am very excited that we are able to have a good number of teachers attending this conference again this year. According to my count, we have 12 teachers from six different shools in the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston attending this year's conference.

If you have not already, make sure to check out the conference website. http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/I plan to spend some time this week picking out some sessions I hope to attend. I am going to use the conference planner to help me prepare- it is a great tool. http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/planner/planner_login.php
This will be my fourth NECC conference and I really have learned that it is most beneficial when you are well prepared and have at least an outline of what sessions you would like to attend and a list of other events you don't want to miss. Everything goes by so quickly. I am confident that we will be able to gather so much new information and great ideas to bring back to our schools.

I am really hoping this blog will help us record the experience and share it with all of the teachers in the Diocese. Good luck in preparing and packing for the conference! See all of you in DC!