ISTE+Conference+Handouts-+February

1. Students' Perceptions of Creating Audio- and Video-Enhanced Wiki Papers The presentation focused on creating student wiki projects using multimedia. I found this very interesting as it requires the students to utilize what they learned in the classroom (higher order thinking skills). The link to the presenter's wiki site offers all of the steps and applications needed to teach the students how to create multimedia wikis. This is something that I plan to use in my computer appplication classes this year.

2. [|Teaching a High School Emerging Technologies Course] Mrs. Wiscount's presentation focused on the Emerging Technologies course she created at her high school. I found this interesting as all but 2 of the classes I teach focus on technology. I would like to offer a class like this at my school. The link on the presentation site leads to her website, which is full of information I will find useful (she teaches some of the same classes I do and I have been looking for additional materials and tutorials for my classes). She also has a great [|slideshare] that presents the uses of technology in the classroom.

3. [|In Schools We Tweet: Harnessing the Power of Twitter]While the primary url for this presentation was not that exciting, I did find the supporting [|research]link very useful. On that page [|Greg Ferenstein] shares haw using twitter in the classroom is increasing student engagement. One of the ways it does this is by reducing shyness in the classroom. The research comes from a university setting, so we are talking about classes of hundreds, not the dozen or so I have in each class. The other positive pointed out in the article is that the classroom conversations continued outside of the classroom. As twitter does not have a classroom time limit, students are able to continue to ask questions throughout the day. I am very interested in twitter, but I am still not sure how it would work in my classes.

4. Create an Administrative Digital Backpack Using Your iPad While I am not an administrator, I do want to help my administrators be ready for when we roll out iPads in the high school. The infromation in the presenter's wiki offers many apps that will assist in using the iPad, from dropbox to evernote, and many in between. The wiki also points out how some apps may be beneficial to administrators (weather, skype, etc.). It also has a good tutorial video on creating a classroom walkthrough form (very beneficial for our administrators and on our IPI data collection days). I can see uses of this type of form in my own classroom for quick assessments.

5. The 3 I's: iPads Impact Instruction I found this to be useful as our school is contemplating going 1-to-1 with iPads. While I have seen many, many lists of important apps, the wiki that is linked has a list of educational iPad articles regarding the use of iPads in the classroom. As I have been collecting articles (both for and against) on using iPads in the classroom, any additional articles I can find on how we can change education using this technology are beneficial (though my principal might think otherwise).