TCEA+Conference+Handouts-+March

1. The Amazing Technology Race: So Much Technology, So Little Time //Amy Phillips and Janie Stach// The PowerPoint slides show how to create a fun and exciting way for teachers to learn new technology they can use in their classrooms. The slides show what they did in their school and share teacher feedback. The website has all of the documents you will need to make this happen in your school. I think this is a great way to have the teachers learn about the technology they have available, either in the school or off of the internet. I am so excited about this, I want to try this out next year during teacher-inservice before school starts. I know many teachers who would benefit from this!

2. [|Survey Course for Technology Literacy] //Rene' Fuller// This topic is important to me as I am currently creating my school's K-12 technology curriculum. Finding what other schools are doing to make sure their students are profecient in technology will assist me in determining our goal for technology. The handouts listed specific goals and examples this school uses to determine if their students are literate in technology.

3.[|Communicate, Collaborate, & Contribute] //Jennifer Wagner// Jennifer's presentation shared examples and ways to be better at communicating, collaborating, and contributing in education. Within the communicate part, she shared applications for teachers to communicate with other teachers, parents, students, and administrators. Her examples include skype, elluminate, google talk, twitter, and plurk. Her collaboration section listed voicethread, edmodo, and comments4kids. As a current user of edmodo, I can see how it can be a great collaboration tool. The third section of the presentation focused on the tools available to contribute to the world, through the internet. Her examples cover wikis, blogs, dropbox, slideshare and others.

I appreciate she listed all of the websites with links on the final few pages of the notes. It makes it easy to find the applications and try them out.

4. [|Put the Fun Back into Learning with 21st Century Resources-Secondary] //Karen Horn// Karen presented on Thinkfinity, a Verizon Foundation supported learning environment. The site offers tens of thousands of free educational resources that are web-based. According to the handouts, this program focuses on both the teaching standards and the 21st century skills. It is a free service: free to use, free of commercials. The site covers many different content areas, from business to social studies, and the areas in between. The handouts share many strong lesson ideas to use in the classroom. With the focus on 21st century skills, the opportunities for learning after school and at home will help the students stay engaged and excited. This is a site that I plan to continue to review and try out in my classroom.

5. [|Integrating Technology into CScope for Middle School] //Ellen Zimmerman & Susie Brooks// The presentation shares how they incorporated technology into their core classes at the middle school level. The handouts give lesson plan examples that were used to push 21st century skills while making sure the students are learning the standards. I like the point that it is a work in progress, something we all need to remember as we drive technology in the schools. I like the list of sources at the end of the presentation and the suggestion that we try things at school. By trying is how I have come to use some of the technology I use on a daily basis - try something, if you like it stick with it, if not try something new.