Tuesday Sessions Lori Attended

Sorry I didn't post these sooner. I didn't get back to my room until after 11:00 last night and I was exhausted. These are the sessions I attended on Tuesday, my general reactions to them, and links to connected resources. I'm too pooped to post about my Wednesday sessions tonight. Check back tomorrow.

Concurent Sessions (Click on the title to go to additional related resources):
Increasing Student Collaboration Online, Harry Tuttle, Syracuse University, Presenter
This session was pretty good. He broke "Online Collaboration" into 2 categories: 1. Conversation and 2. Projects. Then he talked about a continuum of things to consider for each as well as giving some examples. His attached handout (click on title above) summarizes these things. Participants asked about where they can connect with other classes to set up online conversations and projects. He cited several web sites where people might find connections:
Global Schoolhouse
ePals
Think.com an Oracle product Later I went to their booth and spoke with them. I'll post more on this later when I sort through my stuff and find the info

Digital Video in a High-Quality Literacy Program, John Schick, Bellingham Public Schools, Bellingham, WA, Presenter
I expected this to be better than it was. John Schick is a librarian and has worked with teachers and kids on producing a variety of video projects. He began by talking about how video can be a ver powerful tool for increasing fluency, providing instant feedback, and increasing motivation. Then he showed some samples, but I thought they weren't very strong samples and they were not well edited. These were clips of other things, so maybe that's why they didn't seem too compelling. One idea that was kind of interesting was using the video to record a child reading the same text over time and then playing it back for the student to clearly illustrate progress, strengths, weaknesses, etc. His point was that at risk readers often don't understand what they are doing wrong and aren't necessarily aware of what they are doing right. In one case a teacher had a print out of the story and the child highlighted each mistake they heard themselves make and then drew conclusions about what they need to work on. In these cases the raw video was sufficient and it appeared to be a powerful tool for reading instruction and self-assessment. Click on the title above to view his Power Point. The link to his school web site is below.
http://wwwnhe.bham.wednet.edu

ABC's, 123's, and WWW's - Early Learning and the Web , Gail Lovely, University of Houston, Lovely and Associates
This session was just what I expected. She showed lots of resources to use with primary level students in the area of Math and Language Arts. She also gave examples of how to use these instructionally in a classroom, often pairing offline activities with online activities. Click on the title above to go to a list of the resources she used in this presentation. Visit Gail Lovely's web site and click on the Resources tab for LOTS of other great resources.

Acquiring a Sense of Metaphor: A Distance Learning Experience, Susan Hunsinger-Hoff and Phy Chauveau, Germantown Academy, Presenters
Once again, this was not what I expected. These 2 fifth grade teachers presented a great unit they do throughout the school year which culminates with students creating a great piece of poetry describing their inner self. Click on the title above for links to lots of the resources they use as well as their presentation PowerPoint. The online part, though, was really incidental. They have taught this unit with no online component in the past. Now they have put it on Blackboard to make it an online course. They still teach it in the classroom face to face but by having it online also, students and families can also access the tools, assignments and resources online. They feel that it makes the unit stronger and increases motivation, but I didn't really see how having it online made a difference in the unit. I didn't think they were really using online tools in any way that was different than what they had always done face to face. But do check out their resources. It is a neat project, even without the online connections.

Moodle: An Open Source Alternative for Online Learning, Timothy Williams, Manheim Township School District, Lancaster, PA, presenter
This was more technical than I expected and focused on creating a server and installing Moodle. Moodle is a very rich and multifaceted open source tool. So much of this was over my head and probably not anything my district would ever use. It was an interesting tidbit to broaden my understanding a bit.

And Poster sessions on (Click on the title to go to additional related resources):

Elementary Blogging: Connecting Writers and Technology through Read2Write
Click on the title to a whole list of resources and handouts. This was a neat project. Through a grant they had money to bring a children's author to their school once a month to work with the kids. They then convinced each other to blog with the students. They had lots of great conversations about books both before and after the author visits. I think you could do this without the grant and the in-person visits from authors just by contacting author's online and asking them to blog with students.

Lights, Camera, Action! Students Find Their Voice through Video Production
Clicking on the title above will take you to a description of this poster session. Click here to go to some connected online resources. I didn't get to spend too much time here taking to the presenter, but the videos I saw (from middle school students) were unbelievably powerful!

Using NASA Multimedia Web Sites in Problem-Based Learning
This is fantastic, FREE downloadable software from NASA on a variety of topics and very problem solving/project based in nature. Click on the title above to see a brief description of the software. Go to http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/ to access the software. I was very impressed with what I saw!