Approximately 65 participants were present from Williamsville, Petersburg, Springfield, Rochester, Jacksonville and other locations near Springfield. It was the first time in 10-12 years that we have had the local mini conference.

I had the pleasure of presenting a couple of sessions, one on Clickers/Responders and another about Edmodo. I also attended a session for Google Tools brilliantly presented by Karen Thompson.

Clickers/Responders
My experiences are with the eInstruction clickers and the Classroom Performance System (CPS) software. The eInstruction website offers great tutorials and videos for utilizing the clickers as well as their other products, such as Workspace software, the Mobi and their Interactive Whiteboards. My goal was to share how the clickers were being utilized and not be focused too much on the software, as the participants had various clicker systems including Smart and Promethean.

Edmodo
Edmodo is a learning management system, a classroom management system, or social networking system. It can be utilized in a variety of educational environments.
The best resources for learning about Edmodo are:
blog.edmodo.com - for learning about how people are utilizing
guide.edmodo.com - for learning how to use the system and for information about getting your District setup with the Institutional installation of Edmodo.

I shared various examples ranging from using for an extra curricular HS organization and an 8th Grade Media Literacy class.

I look forward to your comments and questions.

Mahara is a system that can complement a Moodle installation.

I had my first opportunity to share this year at the 2009 Illinois Education and Technology Conference. My presentation was titled, “Creating a Digital Substitute”.  The presentation was basically about using tools such as Flip Video cameras, MP3 Recorders, myplick.com, Microsoft  MovieMaker, Audacity and a variety of other tools. These tools allow a teacher to leave materials for a substitute teacher to utilize during a planned absence or  a staffing. Other opportunities could be a digital field trip, notes for an absent student or review for science lab setup and notes from class.

The idea of creating a digital substitute is a ultimately a way for the teacher to learn the technologies that eventually they will feel comfortable in sharing these technologies with their students. Two speakers (Charlene Chausis and David Jakes) at the 2007 conference shared that we need to immerse ourselves in these tools/technologies  in order for us to have a comfort level that we can then share these tools with others (students).

Moodle  and/or Manhattan Virtual Classroom
Google Apps - for email, calendar, documents, sites, video sharing.
Learn360 - Replacing United Streaming
Study Island
BrainPOP
Diigo
eInstruction – Mobi and CPS Clickers

Additionally we will be introducing LCD projectors and Document Cameras into the K-5 Classrooms.

Here is the controversial statement and the statement that we can all relate to as Tech Coordinators, Teachers, and Administrators.

Let’s hope that we have enough “Time” to “Learn and Share”. Lots of words in this sentence that can be commented on.

Have a great school year,
chris

I will be attending the ICE Conference at the end of this month, February 24-27, 2009. I know there will be teachers and administrators at the conference since ICE stands for Illinois Computing Educators. This is an aspect of the conference(s) that I anticipate. It is the networking with other Teachers, Technology Coordinators, Directors, CIOs, and Administrators.

This will be the second conference that I have attended this year. The first being a conference in Springfield in November called the Illinois Education and Technology Conference.

At these conference(s), I get an increased passion for expanding the utilization of technology in our classrooms as well as ideas for better utilization for the professional and administrative technologies. Mostly because of the successes that are shared during the sessions.

A goal that I have for the upcoming conference is to learn from other schools how they are utilizing their budgets, big or small. As the time comes around this year for building budgets, I wonder about balancing the Capital Outlay, Supplies and Materials and the Professional Development that comes with the technologies.

I will check back in with an update at the beginning of March. In the meantime, please share conferences (technology and non-technology) you attend and one thing that you liked best about the conference.

Keep Learning and Sharing,
chris

MyPlick.com allows you to sync audio with slides. I find it much more informational than just uploading your slides, especially as it is becoming more popular to use less words on slides.

MyPlick allows you to upload slides from various sources such as PDFs, Powerpoint, and even Google Presentations. It allows you to upload audio to the site, so no need to host the .mp3 elsewhere.

Here is an example of a recent myplick “podcast” that our JH Principal put together. He is now scheduling a Tech Breakfast for the teachers to learn as we share the process. Give it a try and let me know what you think of myplick and what other tools and techniques you utilize for podcasting.

7. Are there other ways to share items in Google Reader?Google Reader allows you to assign tags to individual items. To tag an item, click on the ‘add tag’ link and enter a descriptive tag name. You can then go to the Settings page and make the tag public. A unique URL is created that links to the latest items with your public tag. You can then post this link online or send it to your friends.

Google Reader – Sharing FAQ