Marco Antonio Torres is an internationally recognized teacher and filmmaker who uses the movie-making process to make his classroom projects explode with empowerment and enthusiasm. Working along side the exceptionally talented Alas Media Team, this phenomenal workshop will take you through the entire movie making process.
This two day event will be a practical, hands-on session where teachers will learn not only valuable and practical tips on how to make a great movie, but also how to plan and manage such projects. Teachers will also find out how to market this program to their communities and also learn how to share the projects with the world! See how movies have a place in your content area classroom/ new studio. Lights, Camera, LEARN!
Attendees are encouraged to bring their own laptop with either iMovie or Photo Story, and a video or photo camera.
Ewan McIntosh, CEO, Edu.blogs.com, Edinburgh, Scotland
Project-based learning has been let down in too many instances with “fake”, academic, theoretical problems that need solving. The learning processes involved are at best fuzzy for most educators: what is “collaboration”, “student-designed” and “student-led” learning?
Do you love stories? Do you want to learn how to create your own interactive digital stories? Join members of the Scratch Team at MIT Media Lab for a hands-on introduction to storytelling with Scratch. Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy for young people (ages 8 and up) to create their own interactive stories and share their creations online with others. As students program and share with Scratch, they learn to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively, while also learning important computational ideas.
In this hands-on session, participants will be introduced to Scratch, create interactive stories, view examples of stories created by young people and hear how Scratch is being used by educators for storytelling. No prior experience necessary.
Marco Antonio Torres is an internationally recognized teacher and filmmaker who uses the movie-making process to make his classroom projects explode with empowerment and enthusiasm. Working along side the exceptionally talented Alas Media Team, this phenomenal workshop will take you through the entire movie making process.
This two day event will be a practical, hands-on session where teachers will learn not only valuable and practical tips on how to make a great movie, but also how to plan and manage such projects. Teachers will also find out how to market this program to their communities and also learn how to share the projects with the world! See how movies have a place in your content area classroom/ new studio. Lights, Camera, LEARN!
Attendees are encouraged to bring their own laptop with either iMovie or Photo Story, and a video or photo camera.
As well as a practical skill developing session in the classroom, all delegates will take part in an outdoor learning adventure in Boston Park Gardens using a variety of tools and approaches including QR codes, RFID tags, Near Field Communication, overlays in Google Maps along with simple finding the clue activities. All delegates will be left with a toolkit that will help them build and share their own learning adventures.
Side-scrollers. Quizzes. Mazes. Simulators. Young people are using Scratch to create and share a wide variety of interactive games. In the process, they learn important computational concepts (for example, using variables for keeping score and conditionals for making game decisions), while also developing general problem-solving skills and design capacities.
Join members of the Scratch Team at MIT Media Lab for a hands-on introduction to game design with Scratch. Participants will be introduced to Scratch, learn to create games, view examples of games created by young people and hear how educators are using Scratch for game design. No prior experience necessary.
Bring your digital camera and join us on a walking tour of downtown Boston to explore night photography and to change the way you view Boston Harbour.
We will explore global projects engaging students to paint their city, home and themselves in a different light. We will investigate ways we can offer to depict stereotypes, such as inner city locations in inspiring ways.
We will be going on a photo safari around downtown Boston at night and will look at ways to investigate the how we frame our photos (what we focus on, what we edit out) as a starting point for reflective practice, for writing, art and critical thinking in the classroom. Learn about night photography and painting with light to ignite imagination and create highly dramatic photos to render the familiar a little strange.
In this four hour session you will learn the basics of information literacy, plus have the opportunity to work with members of our team as you explore how to build a blog, create a podcast or start a wiki. Learn how to integrate all of these tools together in meaningful and effective ways. Our team will show you how it all fits together and will be available during the course of the conference week to work on projects and integrate new ideas. The results will be expanded opportunities for authentic work, global audience and your students making a knowledge contribution.
Data can be fascinating, and it is not something that is just for math or science class. Since 2010 we have never had so much publicly available data about the way our lives are run, the environment, our geography, our history… But most of us do not know how to tap into the PDFs, tables, geocodes and charts to dig out the meaningful stories hidden in there. Learning how is one of the key new literacy skills our youngsters will need if they are to be fully participative members of society:
High powered, low-cost smartphones now afford us the opportunity to learn on the go. With these devices, students can perform research, collaborate, interact with experts, and produce creative works all from a phone! But which one is best for supporting student learning? In this session, we will examine the Android and iPhone mobile platforms, unique features of each that support student learning, and applications and activities that support differentiated mobile learning.
Participants are encouraged to bring their own smartphone to this hands-on session as interaction will be built into the session using online polling websites, Google Forms, and other means of mobile interaction.
Do not miss out on this innovative workshop. Most content also applies to iPod Touch and iPad users. Teachers, administrators, IT professionals and technology coordinators are welcome.
How can photography be used in the the narrative reflective processes to improve writing? What can be learned from the images, videos and narratives we create when taking or making pictures? What does our point of viewing in the images we record tell us about our point of view? We are storied people, living storied lives. To know who you are, to make sense of your life, is essential to making sense of an educator’s own practice. Come to this highly popular session to learn how to render the familiar a little strange through photography.
When it comes to using technology in the classroom, it is easy to become distracted by the glitz, glimmer and gimmicks of activities high in “cool factor” but lacking in rigor or academic value. How do we design learning experiences that challenge students at their learning edge and draw on or strengthen their repertoire of digital skills and literacies? How do we “locate the learning” in student-created content and projects? How do we avoid the allure of “BLING” (cool tech tools) and focus on the power of “BANG” (meaningful student-centered learning) to effectively “widen the walls” of our learning environments?
Discussion about Dr. Mazur's keynote.
This is a practical and fun workshop focused on basic planning strategies for teachers and students alike. Because there are so many tools floating around in the class, along with a variety of needed roles, potentially disorganized environments may occur! We can help. We will explore tips and tricks on how to best plan daily, weekly and semester-long projects. Moreover, we will also discuss ways to connect and collaborate with other schools.
Celebrating 25 years in educational technology, New York Times Best Selling Illustrator, Peter H. Reynolds, children’s advocate, author, illustrator, and successful entrepreneur, will share his uplifting vision how to inspire more creative classrooms and share his knowledge and love of the written word.
Hear about Peter’s six essentials to foster creativity and innovation in the classroom. See how technology allows one to make new connections, share new ideas, and see what else is possible.
His message is served up in a delightful, touching and unforgettable style which is an entertaining blend of...his fanciful art work, live animation and a reading of one his books, The Dot, The North Star, or Ish. Peter will also share his latest DVD, Stories That Matter, Stories That Move along with his heart-warming tales of how creative educators dared him to make his mark.
Peter’s words, illustrations, animations and actions remind us to:
Wayne Township’s students and teachers were clamoring for access to on-line resources and opportunities for collaboration; but IT needed to maintain network security, CIPA compliance, user safety, and AUPs.
At no additional cost to the district, Wayne Township deployed My Big Campus to provide an engaging online environment for blended learning.
Hear from Team Wayne Township about how they:
One of the biggest problems educators have with integrating technology is keeping what is valuable from the past while still incorporating modern tools. Using a verbs and nouns metaphor that many have found useful, Prensky shows how the fundamental skills taught by educators change relatively little over time, whereas the tools for learning and practicing those skills will be changing ever more frequently in the 21st century. The talk presents a useful framework to deal with technological change in the classroom (Talk is based on Prensky’s book: Teaching Digital Natives).
In the Progressive Science Initiative (PSI), students are taking and passing AP science exams at up to 24 times the state rate; 100 teachers are receiving training in physics and chemistry; and, of those, more than 80 will become newly certified in those fields. PSI Methods have been used to create courses in all of high school science and K-12 mathematics (PMI). PSI and PMI use interactive white board and student responder technology, combined with a website for sharing resources (www.njctl.org) to create face-to-face intraschool and virtual interschool PLCs, enabling and empowering teachers. In the future, it is expected that creative educators will apply those same approaches to new content areas; imagination being the only limitation.
You may feel relatively satisfied with your current search offerings of Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. What if you could search your friends’ thoughts, interests and activities? Would that be a better search experience?
Social search makes it possible to find content in status updates, real-time search, generating, labeling and finding user-generated content, ‘long-tail’ events and interests, finding vs re-finding and trend identification. Social search done right can become your most valuable research and productivity tool saving you time, energy and effort.
In this session we will explore the most promising new search offerings and discover which social search tool has the unique features that will make your search efforts more successful.
This session is about transcending school reform to make new forms of school. It centers on creating learning environments designed to go beyond achievement to foster engagement in all types of K-12 settings. The session will be particularly useful for people starting plans for new schools or extensive redesign of existing schools.
This workshop will engage participants in lively discussion about:
This session will explore the above ideas in detail and devote significant time to collaborative online development/sharing of:
Shannon McClintock Miller uses social media with her students, teachers and throughout the school community everyday. Through social media, she has connected her students to authentic learning experiences that foster collaboration, communication and the skills that they will need as digital citizens in our emerging global society. In this session, she will show the positive roles social media can play in fostering interactions, leadership, personal responsibility, collaboration and effective communication using a variety of digital environments and media. By using social media, students are given a purpose and powerful audience that brings incredible value to their learning. Shannon will show how social media has changed the way she teaches and will inspire you to get your students connected through amazing stories, conversation and the voice of her students.
This workshop will explore productivity tools, educational activities and more, using built-in and freely available applications for Apple’s iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad). Learn how to use your iOS device to develop lesson plans, podcast and directly access iTunesU content. Also discover tips and tricks to get even more out of your Internet communication device.
This workshop will demonstrate the powerful effects of integrating student-created math video lessons, also called screencasts or mathcasts. The math videos are used as tutoring tools, a form of authentic assessment and for creating an enhanced “kids teaching kids” classroom culture. Perhaps best of all, the students enjoy creating these screencasts.
The video tutorials are used in classroom instruction and shared with a global audience via our iTunes podcast, YouTube channel, as well as our own Mathtrain.TV Web site. You will view student-created screencasts and discover how easy it is to create them for nearly any subject, as well as share them on-line, using the screen recording software Camtasia Studio and free Jing. Two actual students will be co-presenting and demonstrating how we create our screencasts.
Have you heard of Twitter? Are you wondering what all the fuss is about? Have you tried it and still do not get it? In this session we will focus on the ways Twitter can be harnessed to build a rich and powerful learning community. We will discuss tips and tricks to leverage the potential of this network. Resources will be provided to help attendees set up their own networks during and/or after the session.
In this session, Mike and Traci will provide an update of laws, cases and issues emerging in technology and education in the US in the past year. This session will include selected statutory and regulatory changes and guidance (such as the US Departments of Justice and Education’s joint guidance on eReader devices and ADA/IDEA compliance) and will examine court decisions likely to influence technology’s role in education.
"You mean there is educational value in World of Warcraft?” Absolutely! In this session, Peggy Sheehy will discuss her experiences playing World of Warcraft (WoW) with her students and a team from Pender County Schools in North Carolina. Come hear as she shares her own gaming experience, the professional educator community that has emerged as her guild in World of Warcraft, “Cognitive Dissonance” and her joint venture with Lucas Gillispie (Pender County Schools) in a project that initially targeted at-risk students in an after-school program designed to build community, leadership, literacy and student confidence in a variety of curricular areas using WoW. This past year, the project evolved into a literacy elective, "The Hero's Journey," and was brought into the academic day. English Language Arts, digital citizenship, communication, web 2.0 and social networking are all addressed in a blended curriculum using Moodle courseware, JRR Tolkien's, "The Hobbit," and World of Warcraft.
Join us as we explore how innovative teachers employed action research and challenge-based learning methodologies in their classrooms over a span of 12 months. These projects yielded highly significant results, behavioral and data driven, both from students and teachers. These teachers are part of an online masters degree focusing on emergent media and immersive learning environments for learners of all ages. A partial requirement of this degree is to conduct an action research project as well as a challenge based-learning initiative.
Challenge Based Learning requires the teacher to be part of the learning process and work along side the students to produce possible solutions. Solutions will often reflect individual interests and desires, which motivate students to take ownership of their learning. These solutions are shared with a global audience, which brings attention to communication, collaboration, critical thinking and evaluation, skills for the 21st century.
Discover how teachers and school leaders locate and create ready-to-use Web applications, lessons, quizzes and rubrics for the benefit of learning new skills. Utilize valuable professional development resources, creativity tools, problem solving resources, fun and creative experiments and collaboration connections, to make learning even more fun for you and your students.
This session will cover how to produce engaging multimedia projects resulting in increased student commenting and achievement including efficient ways of learning and how to utilize valuable resources for students, teachers and school administrators alike.
Topics:
In order to help students become globally connected, their teachers and administrators need to be globally aware, curious, interested and competent. Let us explore the why and how of becoming a globally connected educator. From global competencies, connections, collaborations and communication to tools and projects designed and created for you to investigate the world, bring in perspective, knowledge, skills and disposition.
In the Digital Age, the dominance of conventional, linear text of the last few centuries is eroding and giving way to multimodal communication, with its screen-based, non-linear, participatory and visual emphasis. This presentation highlights innovative educational uses of the Read-Write Web that effectively incorporate both conventional prose and multimedia communication. Join in reviewing alternative K-12 activities and projects with interactive technologies and see how online social media is empowering student-centered leaning. Designed for curriculum specialists, classroom teachers, and educational technology specialists, this session features projects from social studies, language arts, world languages and math/science classrooms.
Learn, discuss and share tips and tricks with others in how they use and manage their personal learning networks. The conversation will focus on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but we will go where the conversation takes us. Understanding and expanding your professional reach is essential in today's digital society.
Focus question: How should Media Literacy be fully integrated into classrooms at all grade levels, particularly in this age of converging communications media?
In the classroom it is easy to do some fill-in-the-time media activities to address this concept. However, it is critical today, given our visual world, that we find innovative ways of working with today’s teachable media moments. This workshop is designed how to develop a variety of short, practical media activities and to use the key concepts of media analysis.
We can cost technology in schools, but how do we measure its value, especially when cost is questioned?
How can we help others to manage change by recognising and valuing the educational benefits such as:
This session investigates an approach to measuring the value of educational technology in schools using a study method developed in Australia and the USA and applied in Canberra, England, California, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and Portugal.
The approach surveys the capabilities of teachers, the vision and value proposition of the school, the views of staff and students and the Gartner Group total cost of ownership model provided by CoSN.
Come explore and discover the latest iOS apps for learning, play and productivity! Douglas Kiang will present the top apps he and his colleagues at Punahou School have been using to enhance learning in the classroom, and help learners of all ages to be more productive, organized and better informed.
Online learning has exploded in recent years. Some studies predict that high school students may be taking upwards of 50% of their courses online before the decade is out. But effective online teaching is very different from teaching in a classroom or lecture hall. This session dives into the facets of designing online courses that keep students engaged, learning and collaborating. Discover strategies to keep learning fun and effective through a number of free or nearly free distance technologies available today. Whether you're new to online teaching, already leading courses or an old pro, you are bound to come away from session with scores of techniques, strategies and ideas on how to galvanize your online courses.
THINK Global School (TGS) is the world's first global, mobile high school. We have no building we can call home. Instead we take students and faculty from 12 countries to live, study and explore in three different international cities each year--Stockholm, Sydney and Beijing in year one, for example. In place of of bricks and mortar, we have iPhones, iPads and Macbook Pros--every student and faculty member works with all three devices--and a custom-made ELGG-based web platform to hold them all together. After a year of running a 3:1 program we'd love to share our experience: More is less--making the technology ubiquitous paradoxically makes it less visible (pens and pencils are everywhere but we do not notice them) and the less visible the technology, the less disruptive it is; for similar reasons, ubiquitous connectivity is important; apps do not matter but the the idea "there's an app for that" does, which means users can choose apps based on personal preferences; finally while there is overlap in their capabilities, each device is best suited to different purposes (iPhones are superb data capturing tools, laptops better data processing and production tools) But if we could only have just one tool it would be the iPhone--not an iPad or Laptop.
In this session we will present a brief summary of the TGS 3:1 program and follow with a discussion. We will demonstrate workflow across all three devices so bring iPhones, iPads and laptops.
Why promote 21st century skill development? How are digital immigrants essential in the education of today's digital natives? What are some ways to engage today’s students? How do educators put all these ideas together to create real student centered learning and essential educational transformation? More than a presentation, you will have the opportunity to listen to testimonies from educators, students and various professionals. Along the way, Mike will share some tools he has created to assist your digital natives. These include, ”Ten Basic Google Search Techniques” and “Seven Step (A-G) Web Evaluation Program." Learn about amazing free web resources such as Intel Thinking Tools and investigate student creativity with some video creation ideas. Have the opportunity to smile, laugh, engage and reflect on both practice and possibilities. Walk away with points to ponder, antidotes, a reason to transform and resource material that you can share with your personal learning community.
Many propose teaching problem-solving skills, yet few show teachers practically how to go about doing it. Prensky proposes a way to teach problem solving using a simple, generalizable methodology, and then applies that methodology to all subjects and levels. (Talk is based on Prensky’s next book from Corwin.)
Being part of the "Millennial" generation and the Information/Technology Age is nothing new. It happened before in the few hundred years surrounding the beginning of the last millennium. The difference now is that our society and educational community are going through that same information upheaval in less than a generation. From the Moors' invasion of Spain to the printing press to Web 2.0+, let history shed some light on where we might be going and how we might guide the journey through the following examples:
School-safe social media technology has evolved. ePals LearningSpace includes a full suite of easy-to-use cloud-based web 2.0 tools for communication and collaboration, robust safety and security features, generous storage space, ability to add third party applications and integration with the district’s locally supported and managed resources. This technology, used throughout Hauppauge (NY) Schools, can empower teachers and students to create their own collaborative learning communities and to enjoy more great days of teaching and learning together any time, anywhere and with anyone in the world they choose.
Breaking curriculum free from its "rusty cage" -- constraints of time and place and an overemphasis on objectives that can be explicitly evaluated for grading purposes -- can open a world of exciting new opportunities to discover and develop the unique talents of every student.
Cognitive development occurs in a social context containing the powerful forces determining the nature of an individual’s life.
This birds of a feather session is intended to provide an opportunity for you to meet with other advanced users to share ideas and learn from one another. This is a moderated session where presentations will be by participants in the room. This is your two minutes of fame to share something cool, leading edge or extremely powerful for learning.
Criteria:
Come experience the power of giving 18-year-old students the opportunity to design personal learning pathways during the last semester of high school. You will see how each individual student focus became the vehicle through which they demonstrated their cumulative skills in research, product development, community service and public speaking.
Attendees will learn how our five-year program leverages a defunct state requirement into a rich, 21st century cornucopia while most of our students take full college loads. Hear of the challenges as well as our student’s successes as we engaged our local community to meet the burgeoning needs of students in today’s classrooms.
Student examples will include:
Discover free, Web-based tools that motivate your students to learn and connect with the global community. Make the move from content consumption to content creation and community building while developing more self-directed learners and raising global awareness. This session will be a rich source of ideas, resources and information about learning with technology in the 21st century.
Signatures, notations, scribbles, messy handwriting and top-secret and declassified stamps can make students wonder about the lives of documents and curious to learn more. These can be great hooks in the classroom. So too can be a letter written with enough emotion to make the reader bubble with anger about events that happened 50 years ago. Or a statement from a teenager about a troubling situation that makes the reader swell with pride at the author’s eloquence. Or an official government document that matter-of-factly classifies people based solely upon their ethnicity and induces bewilderment about how living in the past must have been. Primary sources can evoke emotion and empathy in students, making them perfect teaching tools for sensitive subjects. This session will explore the capacity of primary sources to address difficult-to-teach topics. Participants will also be introduced to DocsTeach.org, where they can search for primary sources to use in the classroom.
In this session, teachers will learn the basics of podcasting from the initial planning stages to publication within iTunes. See how educators can immerse students in international collaboration projects and have students become positive and contributing global citizens.
In the Progressive Science Initiative (PSI), students are taking and passing AP science exams at up to 24 times the state rate; 100 teachers are receiving training in physics and chemistry; and, of those, more than 80 will become newly certified in those fields. PSI Methods have been used to create courses in all of high school science and K-12 mathematics (PMI). PSI and PMI use interactive white board and student responder technology, combined with a website for sharing resources (www.njctl.org) to create face-to-face intraschool and virtual interschool PLCs, enabling and empowering teachers. In the future, it is expected that creative educators will apply those same approaches to new content areas; imagination being the only limitation.
In this session, Traci and Mike will provide an overview of federal laws regulating the use of technology in American schools, including the usual suspects (CIPA, NCIPA, FERPA, IDEA and TEACH) and never-saw-it-coming laws (like FLSA and ADA). This session will be of interest to both novices to the topic and battle-tested veterans who may have lost sight of the legal forest because of the fees.
Imagine if students, thirty miles apart, could collaborate on their own digital textbook. Now imagine students receive no grade for their work. Imagery, podcasts, texts, PowerPoints, hyperlinks and more all created by students and for the world. In this presentation, we will focus on how we built a 21st century learning environment between two school districts; one with a 1-to-1 laptop program and the other with a computer lab. We will explain how we built a common curriculum that engages and empowers our students to collaborate, communicate and disseminate their story of world history using Skype, GoogleDocs and Wikispaces. Our students’ efforts, over the past five years, have resulted in the creation of a living, digital textbook. Engaged with curriculum, motivated by a desire to understand the world in which they live and leaving digital footprints worth following.
The iPad brings interactive learning right into the hands of students, teachers and administrators. These powerful mobile learning devices have the potential to revolutionize learning with a set of ever growing tools for all curriculum areas and learning styles. In this session, we will discuss how iPad devices will transform educational environments with innovative tools to meet each student’s learning needs.
So, you have integrated technology in your classrooms. Is it leading to improved learning? What does assessment look like in a Digital Age classroom of Web 2.0 integration and multimodal projects? How do we distinguish between higher-order thinking and "bells-and-whistles"? In this session we will explore the role of a "logic model" and backward-design principles in developing effective "Assessment 2.0" strategies. We will look at techniques and rubrics that help establish a clear relationship between project goals and skill benchmarks. We will also focus on the critical role of formative assessments and timely intervention. Furthermore, we will also examine how a 2.0 assessment differs from a traditional assessment. A fundamental goal is to identify characteristics of effective assessments that link to and measure student mastery of worthwhile learning goals.
Educators can empower others to use communication, social media, collaboration and connections to make a difference. This workshop will focus on developing a vision that encourages students to “think, lead and serve while connecting to their passions.” Change can begin by building a team environment that includes teachers and students. Shannon will demonstrate how to strengthen the local school community and promote global connectivity using Google Sites, blogging and social networks. You will leave this presentation with several ideas that can be replicated and successful in your schools as well.
Give your students a voice by helping them run their very own film festival from beginning to end. From creating the movies, to securing the funding, to finding a venue and welcoming the public, this workshop will give you the tips you need to help students and teachers plan and run a successful film festival in your own community!
In this session we will look at the essential elements of a successful collaborative project and share several free technology tools that can help facilitate this type of learning. These tools can help students to create websites, write papers, collaborate on presentations and collect data. Tools will include Google Apps (docs, forms, presentations and spreadsheets), Wikispaces and Ning.
In this session you will learn:
What if we tried to go Google-free? How hard would it be? Should we be looking for alternatives? Will you like them? Are we too reliant on Google’s services? Is it dangerous to give all our information to one corporation? Should we be moving our data out of Google as soon as possible? Does Google have too much "Power"? What would you do if Gmail, went down? Join us, find the answers and discover alternatives.
In the last few years, education has finally noticed gaming and virtual worlds, but this gaming attention has been characterized by two very different perspectives. Some see engagement, concentration and collaboration, while others see isolation, social dysfunction and addiction. Often, educators have difficulty seeing the relevance of a particular game to some portion of their curriculum. This presentation will dispel the myths surrounding gaming, draw clear connections between games and learning and give attendees practical examples and resources to begin using these powerful learning platforms.
Many teachers and school administrators are stuck between wanting to integrate new technology tools in their classrooms and being overwhelmed on where and how to begin. This session addresses that reality and provides examples and encouragement about getting started. Examples are real world and encouragement enthusiastic.
Transform your teaching and learning by creating and sharing authentic assessment using free screen recording software. See real examples of schools, teachers, students, peers and universities who are creating screencasts to comment on student essays and to provide meaningful feedback on student work.
This session focuses on various simple, easy and useful ways to incorporate screencasting with students. Two actual students will be co-presenting and demonstrating screencasting options.
Take advantage of the free tools that come with every computer and the American Film Institute's years of research, field testing and curriculum development to integrate filmmaking into your core curriculum. Students take charge of their own learning, build on their visual literacy skills and master and retain content at a deeper level.
Have you been on Twitter for a while? Do you feel like something is missing? There's a good chance that you are not maximizing your experience. Signing up for and learning the basics of using social tools are generally pretty easy. But to really gain value, you need to understand the more advanced features of what these tools have to offer. This workshop will provide you with several examples of how to tweak your usage to gain the most value out of your time online.
Feeling overwhelmed with information? Come play at this highly creative and engaging session on using the iPhone camera for learning. Create math walks, use GPS tags to use photos for history or socials classes, use photography to improve student writing and create point of view images for more powerful perspective writing. Bring your iPhone or new iPod touch with a camera.
One of the most effective ways to get students collaborating with each other is to use tools that are easily accessible. If the tools are browser agnostic, have no demand for installations or updates and are intuitive, the collaboration is more likely to be effective. Together, we will look at Google Forms, Docs and Sites as a suite of tools to facilitate and foster global collaborations.
John will share a range of "Active Learning Recipes" for thriving in a connected world of difference. He will explore a range of new tools and their use a catalyst for active learning and for managing formative feedback. The session will also explore the potential of difference bingo, managing the sensory matrix and taking eBay style profiling to the classroom. The session will also include an introduction to the Learning Event Generator and resources that allow for 300 different ways to "show what you know."
With personal technology devices becoming pervasive, many schools are contemplating “bring your own device” initiatives, allowing students to bring and use their own technology in schools. This session will explore legal and policy issues related to such initiatives. Does CIPA’s filtering requirement apply to student owned devices used on school networks? Does the school have an obligation to “upgrade” devices of students with disabilities? Come and find out.
An education that incorporates the principles and priorities of a passion-driven classroom: disciplined study, fostered imagination, active participation and community contribution, will result in learners who are successful and citizens who are ready and willing to participate in shaping the future.
Come join me as we explore how to organize, manage and create school and classroom environments that spark and sustain students’ energy, excitement and love of learning.
Enjoy a wonderful story with novel ideas to incorporate PBL with free technology. Travel through lands of PBL ideas; discover collaborative resources and extend PBL beyond your classroom. Browse the chapters below, prepare your imagination, be ready for new possibilities and be sure to stop by for a story that leaves you with a happy ending.
THINK Global School (TGS) is the world's first global, mobile high school. We have no building we can call home. Instead we take students and faculty from 12 countries to live, study and explore in three different international cities each year--Stockholm, Sydney and Beijing in year one, for example. Instead of bricks and mortar, we have a 3:1 program (iPhones, iPads and MBPs) held together by a custom-made ELGG-based web platform built to support Alan November's Digital Learning Farm concept. Our curriculum model--core learning practiced through applied learning leading to original research--is also wrapped around the students-as-contributors idea. With our nomadic life and continuously evolving program of events and explorations our classroom is defined not by where we are, but by what we do, not by physical space, but by psychological space. The Farm has helped us build the independence of thought and work that is both a practical necessity and a key developmental goal of our school.
In this session we will look at how we set up our technology to support the Digital Learning Farm as a core practice, present some examples of student work and discuss the results of working with the Farm for a year with 15 students from 11 different countries.
High powered, low-cost smartphones now afford us the opportunity to learn on the go. With these devices, students can perform research, collaborate, interact with experts, and produce creative works all from a phone! But which one is best for supporting student learning? In this session, we will examine the Android and iPhone mobile platforms, unique features of each that support student learning, and applications and activities that support differentiated mobile learning.
Participants are encouraged to bring their own smartphone to this hands-on session as interaction will be built into the session using online polling websites, Google Forms, and other means of mobile interaction.
Do not miss out on this innovative workshop. Most content also applies to iPod Touch and iPad users. Teachers, administrators, IT professionals and technology coordinators are welcome.
Critical, dynamic thinkers are a “must-have” in today’s society, but how do we create such a thinker? Promethean’s Learner Response Systems allow us to engage every learner in any subject area with a higher-level thinking experience and immediate feedback. You will learn how to seamlessly incorporate Learner Response Systems into your classroom of kindergarteners to seniors in this hands-on session. You will also discover keywords to incorporate into your discussion questions that will evoke the most thought by challenging your learners to surpass their critical thinking potential!
Focus Question: We have the technology, students have the digital tools....so how should our curriculum permeate all aspects of our teaching, students’ learning and assessment?
In this workshop, many student examples and ideas will be shared on how to assess concepts beyond paper and pencil. We will focus on how to use our media-rich environment--video and visuals--to transform assessment beyond the essay and multiple choice through social media and various media tools.
Learn about the Encyclopedia of Life project, a global effort to document information about all of the estimated 1.9 million species on Earth (www.eol.org). The focus will be on how EOL, a completely free resource, can be used for curriculum development resources and to actively engage students in the process of doing science with its participatory tools and to become familiar with this life-long learning resource. Anyone can access, reuse and repurpose the authoritative scientific content, podcasts, media and literature found on EOL. Web-based tools allow students to better access, use and share biodiversity information and to be involved in science projects, while also learning about media and technology. The following tools will be demonstrated:
The presentation will draw upon information and results gained from specific projects in formal and informal learning settings.
Tough economic times demand strong, innovative ties between industry and education. Immerse yourself in the Blue Valley School District's Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS), which is revolutionizing high school education through a nationally-recognized, profession-based educational model. Created in partnership with seventy-four international business partners (from IBM to Sprint to Garmin), hundreds of business professional mentors, six leading universities and education experts, CAPS is designed to provide high school students the skills needed to succeed in the competitive college environment and global work force. In this session, participants will Skype live with students and partners of the CAPS program and learn the:
Blue Valley CAPS received a Gold Edison Award in the Living, Working and Learning Environments category in 2011.
Learn more about Blue Valley CAPS at http://www.bvcaps.org/
http://www.bvcaps.org/Pathway/filmmaking/Video/1433/caps-innovation-video/View.aspx
A practical exploration of the intersection between visual design, presentation design and instructional design. Every day, several times a day, teachers everywhere are called upon to educate, entertain, elucidate, enlighten and maintain attention and amongst their students. With the advent of interactive white boards and/or video projectors in classrooms everywhere, the intersection of these skills is fast becoming a centrepiece of an educators toolkit. This workshop will model and illustrate concrete ways in which teachers can incorporate these skills into their pedagogical practice.
From slow motion to green screen/chroma key to conversations with historical figures, learn how students and teachers can mimic Hollywood and television effects with the simple editing software found on any computer.
Rock Our World celebrates community building through the integration of science, music and collaborative technologies. Students share creativity and learning with digital technologies.
No longer should you be concerned about spending precious classroom minutes mining the Internet looking for information. Join us as we take a tour of the tools and strategies that Google has developed to help you and your students focus on synthesizing the information you have found rather than spending precious classroom time trying to find it. Explore how to use Google’s latest search techniques with your students and develop strategies to help your students do meaningful queries rather than just hunt for data.
Critical, dynamic thinkers are a “must-have” in today’s society, but how do we create such a thinker? Promethean’s Learner Response Systems allow us to engage every learner in any subject area with a higher-level thinking experience and immediate feedback. You will learn how to seamlessly incorporate Learner Response Systems into your classroom of kindergarteners to seniors in this hands-on session. You will also discover keywords to incorporate into your discussion questions that will evoke the most thought by challenging your learners to surpass their critical thinking potential!
In a world where students are constantly plugged in, how do we find the balance between engaging them on “their level” and also teaching them the face to face skills of conversation and real life interaction? When children share the same physical space, how do we ensure they also share the same mental space?
In this session we will attempt answer the following questions.
Both The Partnership for 21st Century Skills and ISTE have outlined what they believe to be 21st century skills today's schools need to be teaching students. A common standard they have both identified is the ability for students to interact, collaborate and publish with peers and experts in multiple environments through a variety of mediums. In this session, we will analyze why the ability to collaborate effectively is a critical skill and how educators can facilitate student collaboration through Google Docs.
Discussion about Rob's keynote.
If you are on Twitter and you want to answer the questions of "why, how and what to do next?" -- this is for you. Our discussion will unpack the essential aspects of Twitter and its power to change the world, while also establishing its relevance and impact for education.
This hands on session promises to take your Twitter presence and experience to the next level leaving you ready to “tweet “ with purpose, power and confidence.
Integrate Project Based Learning, 21st century skills and the fine arts into STEM education. Include all students as you go beyond the STEM based disciplines. Discover dozens of engaging online programs and opportunities that allow STEM to push your students’ creativity and innovation. The results will be an educational experience that will rev up student engagement and inquiry…full STEAM ahead! View several brief demonstrations and gather resources that will get your class started using free software applications including MIT’s Scratch, West Point Academy’s WP Bridge Project and Google’s Sketch Up. Learn from a practicing educator who was named STEM Educator of the Year by the Fort Wayne Chapter of the US Air Force Association, an Indiana Teacher of the Year Semi-finalist and a facilitator for the Siemens Discovery Education National STEM Academy. Walk away with resources that will allow for real STEAM in your school that includes everyone...STEAMIE!
Students need assistance in learning how to think, how to believe and how to succeed. "Mistakes are not disasters," but an opportunity to learn something new. Join us and discover ideas on "Life Lessons." Explore assignments that you can implement in your classroom.
Last year we described the mission, vision and rationale for the project: developing a model for educating K-12 and higher education students capable of succeeding in a flat and diverse globe. GTEC provides an alternative approach to developing the 21st century global workforce through a unique international mentorship and collaboration among K12, higher education and business/industry.
This year we will report on progress with two pilot programs. In the first program, students from Spirit of Knowledge Charter School, Worcester, MA, and Haywood Engineering College, UK, teamed up to create a ‘global classroom’ to solve an energy optimization problem. In the second program, Newburyport High School joined undergraduates from Olin College of Engineering in a problem-oriented co-design project to reclaim wasted energy. Both pilot programs received technical support from Parametric Technology Corporation, Needham, MA / UK.
Further discussion will include next steps involving additional partners abroad and at home.
Few schools have the amount of technical support that they need, and one of the most overlooked technical resources schools have is the students! If you know teachers who are reluctant to use technology, a great way to encourage them is by using students as tech liaisons. The student learns by teaching and the teacher learns by listening. In this session, we will cover a variety of examples of how this is accomplished in a way that benefits everyone.
Augmented Reality, a technology that has been around for several years, has found its place in pop culture, the world of art and museums thanks to the prevalence of smartphones and location-based services built around them.
Augmented Reality allows the user to discover virtual objects in real-world locations through their cellphone's camera. It has been harnessed by cultural organisations and museums to create exhibits within exhibits, or to show off the history and photographic heritage of a city.
This is a session to learn about how others have used it and set about harnessing this exciting technology in your own learning environments.
Adding value to learning and marketing what we do/think/produce are key ingredients to our learning spaces today and tomorrow. Many of our schools are, however, still using traditional means of producing research papers and reports – text-based final products. Using the power of visual storytelling can intrinsically motivate all involved (including teachers) to explore new and exciting ways to create learning, and more importantly, showcase it to the world. Documentaries are an important form of media that allow/empower content area teachers new avenues of adding value to their learning goals. This is a quick workshop that will explore strategies on how to best create an environment where these projects can be produced and shared.
Have you been on Twitter for a while? Do you feel like something is missing? There's a good chance that you are not maximizing your experience. Signing up for and learning the basics of using social tools are generally pretty easy. But to really gain value, you need to understand the more advanced features of what these tools have to offer. This workshop will provide you with several examples of how to tweak your usage to gain the most value out of your time online.
We live in a time of communication and information. As classrooms change to reflect this reality there are many things to consider such as critical thinking on the web, online safety in a connected world, launching a learning community, opportunities for online publishing, organizing student and teacher learning and connective learning with Google apps and social tools. Join this discussion about getting started, getting comfortable and getting creative with new tools in education.
Could you imagine being seven years old, sitting in an old wooden desk, bundled up in a un-heated school room with bare concrete floors and walls of peeling plaster? As if that was not enough of a challenge, all of a sudden more adults than you can quickly count from a far-away place march in through the open door! What do you do? Why, you just keep on working on your lesson, of course. After all you ARE here to learn. Finally, when the teacher says it is okay, you look up, flash your heartwarming smile and greet the visitors with a friendly “Ni-hao.“ This session will share reflections from a learning journey to China focusing on student achievement and technology.
Shannon Miller is constantly connecting and collaborating with others outside the walls of Van Meter School in Iowa. She hears these types of questions often, “How do you make these connections? How do you plan with someone 1,000 miles away?”, “How do you keep yourself organized?" and “How do you connect the teachers within your school to other teachers?” In this presentation, Shannon will answer these questions and more by having a conversation about her successful collaboration with other librarians, teachers, students, authors and others around the world. She will share tools, social networks and tips on how to bring global collaboration and connections into your schools. By hearing the stories that Shannon has to share, you will see that anyone can do this by being positive, organized, proactive and not afraid to make a difference.
Learn how leaders, including superintendents, principals and teachers, can promote a vision of employing digital tools to engage students in rigorous work. Leaders should emphasize the importance of student use of digital tools to communicate, solve problems and apply content and skills. Leaders should model participation in professional growth and collaboration across job types and levels through Digital Playgrounds, blogs, wikis and/or Twitter. Leaders should implement supportive policies and procedures relating to internet filtering, use of mobile devices on campus and other topics. Leaders should provide greater access to technology through initiatives such as student use of a wireless network; the establishment of a digital learning management system that supports the blending of virtual and traditional instruction and the creation of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure that allows staff and students to access the resources of the district network anytime, anyplace and from any device with browser capability.
QR Codes are popping up everywhere; boarding passes, advertisements and even in newspapers. What do these codes do and how can they be used in education? This session will explore the possibilities of using QR Codes in your school and classroom. Bring your smartphone and your thinking outside the box hat as we dive into this new emerging world of codes and the linking of physical and digital content.
