NICE Mini-Conference

Call for Proposals!!

NICE Mini-Conference 2010 ~ Teachers Teaching Teachers ~

Saturday, January 30, 2010
Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire IL
8:30 AM to 1:30 PM

We are looking for session topics that show best practices, innovative, engaging, and pedagogically sound uses of technology in teaching and learning for all students.

Share your experiences and expertise with your friends and colleagues.

Please complete a separate form for each proposal.

Submit your proposal online by November 1, 2009.

Click HERE to access the form.

Interesting Sites - Sunday

Twitter in the Classroom

• Twenty-Three Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom - Google Docs

  teachers share how they use twitter in the classroom

  tags: twitter, web2.0, classroom

• Twoogle - - Search Twitter vs. Google

  View twitter and Google at same time

  tags: twitter, twoogle

• Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher | Best Colleges Online

  tags: twitter, education

• Twitter Handbook for Teachers

  tags: twitter, education

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

100 Tips, Apps, and Resources for Teachers on Twitter | Online College Degree

• 100 Tips, Apps, and Resources for Teachers on Twitter | Online College Degree

  tags: twitter, web2.0, education

  • This list of 100 tips, apps, and resources is worth browsing. Find out how to get started with Twitter, ways to use it in an educational setting, and tools to help you use it better.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Power Up Your Professional Learning Network

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Power Up Your Professional Learning Network

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: education technology)

Countdown to Conference

NICE Mini-Conference
January 31, 2009

See Conference Flyer for more details.

Time to Reflect

Classroom 2.0 LIVE!is hosting a webcast and show: "What We Learned in 2008" on January 2nd. Click here for more information and a link to the webcast.

Here is my 2008 Top-Ten list for education technology tools:
Classroom 2.0
Google Reader
iGoogle
Blogger
VoiceThread
Diigo
Jing
Weebly
Google Docs
Wordle

What were your favorite education technology tools in 2008?

Voicethread For Ideas

I have been very impressed with the different ways VoiceThread can be used in an educational setting.

How do you use VoiceThreads?

Add your examples to the Classroom 2.0 wiki page
http://wiki.classroom20.com/Voicethread

Sites of Interest - October 4, 2008

I read about Flowgram and Vodpod in Stein Brunvand's Ed Tech in Teacher Ed blog.

Flowgram is a free program that combines web pages, documents, photos and voice comments into one interactive package. Users can control how they navigate through the flowgram. Teachers or students can create an educational flowgram and share the link or embed it in their blog.

Vodpod is free program that allows you to collect your favorite videos and then share the collection on your blog. I added the vodpod widget to my blog sidebar.

Sites of Interest - September 23

Attended the NICE meeting tonight. Here are some of the sites that were shared with the group:

Snipurl - Create smaller URL
LinkBunch - Put multiple links into one small link which you can share
Glogster (education version) - Creat posters for the web

How I Spent My Weekend

My school recently purchased an Ed. Voicethread subscription. Voicethreads can be private or shared. I embedded mine in this post.You can add voice or text comments to each slide.

Imagine the different ways you can use this with your students!

Go to the Voicethread site and sign up for a free account. There are tutorials and a collection of projects.


Other resources:
The Voicethread 4 Education wiki has an extensive collection of student and teacher projects.

The Voicethread for Educators ning has resources, forum discussions and groups.

How I will use voicethread? For professional development!

NICE Mini-Conference 2009

Mark Your Calendar!

January 31, 2009 (Saturday)
•Townline School, Vernon Hills, IL
•Registration ($5) at 8:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M.
•Hear from our 2008 mini-grant recipients

The NICE Mini-Conference consists of 15‐18 concurrent sessions. Sessions are 45 minutes long.

We are now accepting proposals to present at the NICE Mini- Conference in January 2009. Share your expertise with other teachers. Submit your proposal today! Deadline is November 15, 2008.

Click the link below to access the online application.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pVOUEMbKEcFeS-txHE-ueRw

Interesting Sites - On the Road in New York

I spent the summer learning new software, preparing documentation and training users on how to use Office 2007 and tablet computers. The new school year has begun!

I also took advantage of the Labor Day holiday and spent a few days out East.

Here are links to a few of the places that I visited in upstate New York.

The Corning Museum of Glass has online resources for educators. The museum has an extensive glass collection, provides glass working demonstrations and opportunities to create your own glass. (I made a flower.)

The FDR Presidential Library and Museum
website contains educational resources, digitized archival documents and copyright free photographs of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II.

Pictures from Hyde Park

Sites for Today, June 4th

Next Vista for Learners
Free online educational videos created by teachers and students. Create and post your own video!

iEarn (International Education and Resource Network)
Large non-profit global network that enables teachers and youth to use the Internet and other technologies to collaborate on projects.

Personal Learning Communities (Network)

While reading a discussion on Professional Learning Communities in Classroom 2.0, I found this post by Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator: 5 Things You Can Do to Begin Developing Your Personal Learning Network.

1. Join a professional social network
2. Pick 5 blogs to read
3. Set up an iGoogle and Google Reader accounts
4. Comment on blogs
5. Microblog (twitter)

My Personal Learning Network continues to evolve:

1. iGoogle and Google Reader account
   
2. Subsribe/read educational blogs
   
3. Member of Professional Social Networks (Nings)
   
   
   
   • Classroom 2.0
     
   • NECC 2008
     
   • Ning in Education
     
   
   
4. My summer goals
   
   • Comment on blogs
     
   • Start a discussion on Classroom 2.0
     
   • Create a ning for school - technology professional development
     

Will Richardson explaining PLN



Summer Project
Create your own Personal Learning Network!

Today's Interesting Sites

Politics
FiveThirtyEight - This is a great site for following the presidential electoral projections. Weights the results from multiple polling agencies.

Using Technology for Social Justice
El Cilantro - Young people in the Little Village community in Chicago use technology to bring about environmental and social change. Click on Our Map of Environmental Justice. This multimedia map includes video interviews of residents, pictures of the community, and locations of assets and toxins.

Boolean Logic
Boolify Project - Makes it easier to for students to understand their web search by illustrating the logic of their search. Students drag "puzzle" pieces onto a whiteboard and add keywords. Search the web, news or images!

Interesting Sites

I attended the online May 17th Classroom2.0 "Live Conversations - Web 2.0 Week in Review." (Visit the Classroom 20 wiki to see the schedule and view archived programs.)

The program featured an interview of Jeffrey Yan,
Founder and CEO of Digication, a popular e-portfolio site. He demonstrated the features of the program and showed examples of how it is being used in schools.

The following list is from the discussion on interesting web 2 sites:

Diigo. Goes beyond simple bookmarking of pages: highlight web pages, add sticky notes, share with others, join a group
Omnisio Share videos, create presentations
Empressr Visual storytelling and presentation rich Internet application
Primary Access Provides teachers and students primary source documents to create digital movies
iLessonPlan Create, manage, reuse and share your lesson plans
NECC2008 Join this community and share your NECC 2008 experiences

Interesting Site - Speaking Avatar

Create your own speaking avatar and add it to your blog or website!
You have several options for adding sound.

1. Record directly into the program
   
2. Record and edit using Audacity
   
3. Type the text and choose a computer voice
   

Imagine the possibilities in an educational setting!

Helen Otway summarizes a discussion about Voki avatars in the classroom.


Get a Voki now!

Podcasting Explained

Another video from Common Craft! Their videos provide short and understandable explanations of technology subjects.

Podcasting in Plain English


Do you subscribe to podcasts? Visit the iTunes store to find education podcasts.

Web 2 Tools - Wikis

Blogs are a great communication tool for individuals to share information with others. But what can you use for collaborative student projects?

Wikis are a great tool for collaborative projects in the classroom. Students can edit pages, add links and upload files. Two wiki programs that I have used are PBwiki and Wikispaces.

PBwikis are easy to setup and the education version is ad free. Click here to learn more about the features available in PBwiki.

Wikispaces has developed materials for teachers that explain how to create wikis and provides examples of real projects. Wikispaces is ad free. Click here to go to their help page for K-12 teachers.

Using Web 2 Tools

1. Opened iGoogle to read my blogs
2. Read a post by David Warlick describing "Web Tools 4 U 2 Use" wiki
3. The topics on the Web Tools 4 U 2Use include Audio & Podcasting, Blogs, Calendars, Management & To Do Lists, Drawing, Charting & Mapping Tools, and much more.
4. Here is a quiz that I found on the Quiz and Polling Tools page