TCEA+Conference+Handouts

TCEA Conference Handouts-

1. Games Rock. Seriously!- This handout led to one of the coolest sites I have seen in a while. Although it is quite elementary in focus, there are myriads of great links here. She did a great job putting this together, as the entire left site of her page (technologyrocksseriously.com) is filled with alphabetized links to about anything you could imagine. She also makes the main part of her page themed for whatever happens to be coming up (St. Patrick's Day, currently). This is definitely a website I will be sharing at school!

2. Flip This Project- This handout, while very simple, broke down some great ways to create flip assignments for students in project form. It gave ideas for how to get started, ideas that work well for this type of project, as well as offer up ideas for school-wide projects. I will be printing this out for teachers, especially science teachers, since many ideas were science oriented.

3. One-to-One: A Year Later- This was the mother load of what I need for our 1:1 research! This was an 18 page document from a school district who went 1:1. The document contained teacher concerns and discipline and repair issues, what they faced, how they handled it, and what changes are being made or looked into. I am passing this document along to our tech team. While this district had well over 1,000 computers in their 1:1 program, many of the issues will be similar to what we face. Maybe by learning from their issues, we can avoid some of the issues they had and learn from what they did.

4. iCamp- This was a powerpoint presentation that was put together for a group of teachers that passed some proficiency tests in order to participate in this iCamp, where they would learn tools to integrate 21st century skills and learning into their classrooms. It was mostly explanatory, but did have some good insights into how a district could set up technology camps. One thing that I noticed on one of the first slides was "teachers don't get paid". In my opinion, not a good way to start a presentation! :) I will use this tool as we prepare for our tech days in the fall. There were definitely some unique ideas for ways to engage the teacher/learners.

5. Keys to Technology Literacy in Middle School- This presentation was great! It provided a list of descriptors for the digital generation (i.e.; digital natives, etc...) and explained various web 2.0 tools, apps, blogs, and iPod/iPad apps that can be used to teach technological literacy for students in middle school. My first thought was that this would make a great base for any middle school computer course, as it included links to various tools that students could use to explore every level of Bloom's Taxonomy. I will definitely be using this resource with the computer teacher I will be working with next year to create the curriculum for the 6th grade courses.