NCCE 2010

I am looking forward to attending NCCE this year in Seattle. I have gone for the last two years. In 2008, I was a cadre 1 Peer Coaching grant recipient. The conference was in Seattle and it was exciting to be at my first conference. Last year, I went to Portland and enjoyed meeting twitters and connecting with others. This year I will present..... and I am both nervous and excited. I am looking forward to visiting the booths and attending some great sessions.

Clustr Map

It's always nice to know who visits your site and where they come from. I like Clustr map because I like to incorporate geography into the site. Students have fun clicking on the map and seeing where the newest "red dot" is located.

clustr map

Start.io

I discovered start.io this last summmer. Start.io is a simple homepage that holds all of your bookmarks. You can organize the bookmarks into groups and use color to further organize the categories. I've been using start.io for my student computers' homepage. Everything is easily accessible and in one place. Now my students are asking about creating their own start.io pages at home, with parent permission. They are planning on putting all of their favorites sites on their pages to make them easily accessible at home. Love the home to school connection- love that they are taking the technology into their own hands.

My start.io page

start.io

Photopeach

One of my favorite slideshow tools is photopeach. I like the ease of use and the ability for students to make comments quickly. I often embed photopeach into my classroom blog. Here is a sample:

netbooks on PhotoPeach

NCCE

I've been working on this prezi for my presentation on 21st Century Primary Classrooms for NCCE . I think it is turning out ok. My goals are to create a presentation that shows what we do in my room- the integration of technology it daily literacy. It took a long time to convert my video files into flv but I think it is worth it in the end to have the student's voices in the presentation.

21st Century Learning in Primary Classroom on Prezi

Blogging

I am working on a presentation for a class in my building on blogging. I am using prezi which I love. IT really suites the way I think, non-linearly. I think it could be a great tool to use with students in working with story elements. What I like about prezi is that anyone can view it online- before, after, and during the presentation. And you can embed videos and links. My prezi's are still a work in progress- but isn't everything?

Blogging session 1 on Prezi

Delicious

I really love delicious. It allows me to collect EVERYTHING. I am pretty good at throwing out old clothes, messy papers, and bad food but information is my achilles heel. I love to collect information. You never know when you might NEED that information again. Delicious allows me to quickly save anything. Today, I wordled my delicous account and am surprised by some of my tags. Math and Science were large and those are the areas that I feel the least component in. I LOVE literacy and technology but math- well, I'd love to let someone else teach it. Maybe the wordle reflects what I am working on, learning about, and not what I feel strong in.

wordle:
Delicious

My New Blog

I've started this blog to use for my professional development with a focus on Technology in Primary classrooms. Things are changing so fast and I expect so much growth in the next few years. My classroom has been fortunate to be relatively technology rich, yet, I still question, how will this technology help my students learn? What will learning look like in the future?

My favorite author- Katie Wood Ray- said, in What You Know By Heart, "because we are teachers of writing, writing for us is more than just the experience of getting it done. We have to have that experience, but because we teach, we also have to be able to explain that experience. We have to be able to make sense of it, to see what it means so that the experience becomes something larger than the moment.... You see, the students who wait for us in our workshops need us to help them understand how this writing things happens. That's why we can't just let it happen. We have to know why it happens. We have to know how."

Substitute learning for writing. And particularly navigating "21st Century" learning. It's not enough for me to blog, tweet, FB, text message, use web 2.0 tools... I have to experience it so that I can explain the experience to the students. They may be "digital natives"- but I know about learning. And it's my job to help them experience the power of learning through these tools.