METC 2014!

The METC was amazing and exciting! More than anything, I want to share the great resources, technology tools, and tips I collected during the following break-out session presentations:

Discovery Education & Student Engagement: The presenter for this session was someone who worked for Discovery Education and not necessarily a teacher currently in the field. Regardless, he did not advertise the “product”, but rather demonstrated the components of the site. Before coming to this session, I used Discovery Learning for streaming videos which relate to the curriculum content. Using this site, a class could read and watch videos about current events, take part in virtual webinars, and gain background knowledge with different media types. The most useful of the components was the ability to search content to “view, listen, and teach” by specific grade level Common Core State Standards.

BYOD & Google Drive: The biggest take away from the BYOD portion of this presentation was that teachers must manage the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative as they would with any other activity in the classroom. Teachers must have a plan for the use of devices, define and enforce clear expectations (use visuals), be consistent with consequences, trust students with their devices, and communicate to parents the way in which devices are used. Finally, teachers can use Google drive to store student work, allow students to edit each other’s’ pieces, and grade assignments from home. Teachers can also use Padlet, The Answer Pad, and Socrative with Google Drive to assess student learning.

iPads: More Than Just Apps: The presenters shared their presentation concerning this topic (http://goo.gl/3f5S0r). The SAMR model will help teachers decide which kind of apps to use frequently in class. In summary, teachers should use “R” of “SAMR” often which stands for “Redefinition”. Redefinition means that students use apps to synthesize, evaluate, and create to activate critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. The presentation was categorized into lists of apps for substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition.

Using Technology in the Math Classroom: I thought that this presentation would be very beneficial. I quickly realized that the presenter had prepared to focus on pre-calculus and calculus teaching. I did not leave the session because I thought I could use the same tools to create lessons/activities for elementary school students. Aside from the talk of functions and polynomials, I found that the site Math Type could be used to create practice and assessments with adequate equations. I found that students can create graphs using Desmos, Wolfamalpha, and TI-SMARTView. Finally, I learned that teachers can create math tutorials using Jing to voice over steps and video-recoding  while using OneNote to write out steps.

Playing with Presentations: I leanred about VoiceThread, Pow Toons, Trading Cards, SlideShare, Present.me, Zoho Presentation, Google Presentations, and  Animoto. These presentations can be shared or stored online, edited by a collaborative group of students, and graded from any place.

I hope you enjoy these sites and technology tools like I did! There are so many that it is difficult to choose which to explore in depth and use in the classroom – happy teacher-teching!