Twitter+Conference+Reflections

TCEA Conference Reflections- 1. One of the favorite links I found during my following of TCEA on Twitter was a great YouTube video on why high school students don't read what is assigned to them. It is only a little over 5 minutes, but you walk away with thought-provoking evidence on just how and why we should pick the reading curriculum we do.

2. There was a great link on Tuesday that gave access to a Google Doc with 1000+ iPad Apps for Education that were recommended by TCEA. It included the option to save as a PDF, so I could easily print charts to share with colleagues. They were sorted by content, level, and also listed price on iTunes. Very worthwhile and even had a few apps on there that even I hadn't heard of!! :)

3. I found several tweets about free iOS apps that were being offered during TCEA. I downloaded 6 of the KS2 "I am Learning" apps, which I also passed on to our ELL and Special Education staff. They seem exceptional and came with great reviews.

METC Conference Reflections-

1. One of the links I found was a recorded webinar and handouts related to Google Tips and Tricks to Engage Learning. While most of it was stuff I had heard of before, it was a great refresher and an excellent resource as we begin teaching our staff about being a Google Apps School.

2. Another one of the links that I found was based on the work of Dr. McCammon of NC State. There was a link to his site that talked about his FIZZ program, which is STEM-based flip teaching. While some of the video links didn't work for me, I was able to glean quite a bit of information about the site. He did quite a bit of research about productive ways to flip the classroom and have students generating authentic intellectual work through videos and other hands-on projects. I may use this site with our math and science teachers to give them further insight into what they can do with their flipped classrooms.

3. I watched a 50 minute webinar through one of the METC12 links. This was a great webinar about getting teachers to adopt technology. It included a list of what to do and what not to do. He provided some pretty neat examples of how teachers were being innovative with things from classroom rules made via video to using Audacity to show kids how speech can be edited in podcasts. The guy, Rushton Hurley, was a little flighty, but his overall concept and discussion was very good.