MassCUE Technology Leadership Symposium

The Massachusetts Computer Using Educator’s Organization, held its annual Leadership Symposium at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA.  Charles Fadel, co-author of “21st Century Skills–Learning for Life in our Times”, author of various articles and Global Lead for Education at Cisco Systems, presented a keynote address that focused on the premise that “technology is an enabler not a panacea”.  He believes that technology is ”pre-eminent mechanism to profoundly improve the human condition”.  For me this translates into understanding that we as educators so often teach in isolation and lack the time to plan and develop lessons that will advance our students in the global world.  Web 2.0 tools offer educators with the forum to discuss and shape their teaching practice.  This conference was a great way for tech leaders to showcase the improvements that technology offers the education space. 

A few great offerings to explore on your own are:

http://www.ted.com/: TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year’s TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize

www.jingproject.com

Virtual Learning Enviornments using www.wikispaces.com and www.weebly.com maybe www.wiggio.com or other VLE spaces out there!

http://mathtrain.tv/ a free educational “kids teaching kids” project from Mr. Marcos & his students at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, CA

http://www.epals.com/ connect to other classrooms globally…become pen pals using the internet!

www.startaconversation.wikispaces.com This space has been created by Joanne MacDonald and Susan Skeiber to continue conversations about teaching and learning in th ever evolving digital age!

GOT TIME for a Conference?

Brockton Public Schools is sponsoring a Technology Mini Conference of which will focus on 21st Century Skills.  This conference will provide educators with the opportunity to explore a variety of  technological modalities that aid in enhance the teaching and learning process for our Digital Natives.  Hello HollyWood East…calling all amateur video producers…Our event will begin with a Live Video Conference sponsored by Tandberg that will explore the art of Clay Animation by Marybeth O’Brien, a 4th Grade Educator.  All participants of the conference will have a hands-on approach at learning Clay Animation through this Video Conference…not enough and want more?  The conference will then provide participants to explore a variety of technology tools and best-practices ranging from Video Conferencing, Claymation, Interactive White Boards, Student Response Sytems, Discovery Education, Web 2.0, FrontRow, RM Education and so much more! Activity sessions will adequately accommodate the needs of all professionals along the Techno-Constructivist Spectrum! Come one come all, register for the conference at : http://www.brocktonpublicschools.com/page.cfm?p=2412 

March 6th, 2010

9:00 am. – 2:00 pm

Mary Baker Elemetary School

Quincy Street, Brockton Ma.

 

Transform any Computer into a Tablet PC

  

Any teacher who has had access to a StarBoard, Promethean Board, or Interactive Whiteboard, etc. is lost when it malfunctions or for whatever reason is no longer accessible.  Tablet PC’s may be used in a similar manner.  True the functionalities and application tools may not be as top-notch, but any port in a storm.  Well skrbl.com has answered your prayers!

http://skrbl.com/

Skrbl is an easy online whiteboard that allows for multi-users to work together to sketch, text, share files, upload pictures and more all via URL. 

Create a FREE account and begin your brainstorm for the next writing assignment! Upload a diagram and have students label the parts. 

Go to: http://skrbl.com/more.aspx to learn how easy it is…here is a mini tutorial found on the site!   

Use file menu – ‘email invite’ to email an invite to your skrbl whiteboard, your guests get a link to click on, OR give your skrbl URL to your friends.
To write a note – just click on the blank screen and start typing.
To edit a note click on an existing note and edit.
To switch between drawing and text mode click on the or button.
To upload a picture or a file use the File menu.
The file menu also shows you a list of pictures and files you already have online.
To manage your whiteboards, pictures or files, go to your ‘My skrbls’ page.
Click and drag to move a note around the skrbl board.

Simple and easy online multi user whiteboard, start skrbl, give out your URL & start working together. Sketch, text, share files, upload pictures all in one common shared space. There are no new tools to learn, nothing to download, nothing to install. Brainstorm on our simple whiteboard to start thinking together, everyone sees the same screen, everybody gets on the same page.

Podcasting

Greetings DEN Members,

 This summer vacation sure has flown by! There is no better way to get back into the swing of things than by taking a few workshops.  My district sent me to a hands-on Apple Professional Development Podcasting Institute.  As a techie, I was thrilled to be going, for one reason above all others was that we were given the IPOD Classic/Video with an 80GB memory.  This was such a perk! This workshop was well paced, we were all comfortable to ask questions and work with the information given.  We used a great deal of Mac applications like garageband and iphoto.  These programs were so user friendly that it put my PC to shame.  However, this is nothing to hold the PC users back…the members of the class were so helpful that we all pooled our resources and shared quite a few ideas for making this just as easily adapted to that of the PC.  The pc version of garage band is that of Acoustica’s MixCraft 4.  Both programs allow you to create a voice recording, add pictures, music, and sound effects and animate in some ways.  As part of the institute we created little movies using the Aesop’s Fables.  It was really fun, and super easy! I can’t wait to create some great things for my students to use. 

 I would like to share some great websites that we learned about:

www.podomatic.com is a great site that allows you to publish and create your own podcasts.

www.pics4learning.com allows you to download pictures without worrying about copyrights.

www.soundsnap.com has a library full of sound effects that you can download and use again without worrying about those pesky copyright laws.

www.pbwiki.com is a wiki site that allows you to communicate and discuss things with your students…a lot of the teachers in the training were already using this and LOVE it. I can’t wait to try it

As we went through this workshop I realized that I was already creating Podcasts with my students we just weren’t publishing them to a wiki.  So I decided to take some of the projects created by my students last year and turn them into podcasts.  I published them to iTunes.  I was limited at one point because it was not in an iTunes format…rest assured, someone offered a great alternative.  The site www.ZAMZAR.com is a free convertion website.  I simply uploaded my project to this site, identified the file extension I wanted to convert it to (IPOD) and in a few minutes, I was emailed a link to download the new version! It was fabulous!

 I hope you have an opportunity to take a course like this! It was so much fun and so eyeopening to the things you can do!