Jared+McConkey

When we arrived at the Hershey Lodge on Monday morning, I was ready to see new technologies, learn how to use applications, and find more resources. Thankfully, all of my expectations were met, plus some. On Monday, I attended a seminar on integrating comic use in curriculum, which provided a good number of resources for creating comics. Among these resources were the presenter’s blog, [|Make Beliefs Comix], and [|ToonDoo]. I also attended a presentation that was a collection of useful (and many new to me) Web 2.0 applications, such as Survey Monkey, Wall Wisher, and Discovery’s “Builder” applications. I plan on using the Discovery applications in my class for virtual assessment. The third seminar I attended was about developing creative projects. The presenter focused on how to use wikis as resources for all types of products. She showed us about using wikis to create groups and having students collaborate in the wikis. I saved the presenter’s website and it can be found by clicking this link. The final presentation of the day was about effective use of technology. Although the presentation was a bit dry, the creation of e-portfolios is a valuable skill that I will be using to teach students how to develop a portfolio. Tuesday was a very valuable day for me, especially from the first and last presentation of the day. It was about the features of Google, and there were many features and functions of it that I didn’t know about and found very interesting. I think that every teacher in the district could use a brief overview similar to the one I saw. We discussed various ways of searching for material, through the “Wonder Wheel” and narrowing down our results through the Advanced Search options. The third presentation of the day was about Glogster, a digital way to create e-posters that can support images, sound, and video. Since I’ve never used Glogster, I thought it was very valuable to see how to use it and examples of already created Glogsters. To see how the presenter uses Glogster, click this link. The last seminar of the day was about copyright laws and how Fair Use applies to education. Most of my other training sessions focused on tools to use in the classroom, but this focused on a more abstract topic. I think that this was one of the most valuable training session I went to. I honestly was not sure of what constitutes Fair Use and what copyrighted material we could use in the classroom. This session explained how Fair Use allows teachers and students to use any copyrighted material, as long as they are adding to the content of it, use an appropriate amount of it, and/or changing the reason for using it. The presenter’s wiki gives some great examples of Fair Use in context and more information about digital citizenships; the wiki can be found by clicking this link. Wednesday only held three morning sessions before having a closing session at which Bill Strickland, founder of the Manchester Craftsman Guild in Pittsburgh, presented. The first conference of the day was about how faculty could work with budget cuts effectively. It focused on several ideas that help to cut costs and use the budget more effectively. The presenters’ website has many resources to help work with effectively with money available, but also general training on several other applications. Click [|this link] for the presenters’ website. The second presentation was about making reading and writing more interactive in the classroom. The presenters showed us a website entitled [|Storyline Online] which has a variety of celebrities narrating children’s books. All the stories on this site are designed for elementary aged students, so I don’t think I’ll be using it in my classroom, but it is something I would strongly recommend to elementary school teachers. The last seminar of the day was Facebook in Education. The point of this presentation was to educate teachers on the responsible use of Facebook as an educator. The presenter discussed the privacy settings of Facebook for personal Facebook accounts, best practices for teachers to exercise when having a Facebook profile (such as tagging photos or posts on people’s “walls”), and how to handle cyber-bullying. Facebook requests that students not add classmates that they fear may bully them. If students are cyber-bullied, they can report messages and friends to Facebook. Any person who violates Facebook’s Terms of Use will be blocked from using the site. One feature of Facebook’s privacy policy is the ability to create groups. This allows users to determine who can see what portions of their profile. For example, if you were to add a coworker as a friend, but don’t feel comfortable with that person seeing all your photos, you can put that person in a group that doesn’t have access to your photos. I thought that this trip was a great experience for learning new technologies and new ways to use technology that is already around. I have already started integrating some of these technologies into my classroom and plan on educating the rest of the junior high on some of the highlights from the conference. I sincerely hope to continue to attend technology conferences because I want to continually improve as a teacher and adopt new and engaging technologies.