ISTE 2013 Day 1- sort of

So today was kind of the first official day of ISTE for me here in San Antonio. Awesome day. Went to some great poster sessions. I love those! When I was at ISTE in Philly I spent quite a bit of time in the poster area because you can take out as much as you want or as little. I can't even begin to list all the things we saw today. We visited Jason Ohler and how he used Aurasma. I've tried Aurasma and I

think it has some great potential but I don't find it particularly user friendly. I've had some glitches in using in and I know if it doesn't work easily and smoothly teachers will give up on it and stop trying. But, I really think Aurasma is pretty cool so I've going to keep at it and see how I can solve my issues.

Learning management systems seem to be the up and coming thing. First there was Moodle and Blackboard. I've never really used Blackboard for a class. I've seen it but not used it personally. I took my entire masters courses using Moodle and it was okay. Not very fancy. Kind of plain jane of sorts but fairly easy to get around. Well now there is Schoology and Canvas who are going to make those old two step up their game. Both Schoology and Canvas offer many options and seem to flow seemlessly from one thing to another. We are going to meet with a teacher that uses Canvas. I am looking forward to hearing what she has to say. I use Edmodo regularly but will check out these other two on their "free" side.

Well I just tried Schoology and your students have to be 13 and over to create an account. So, is this a platform only for the upper middle and high school crowd? I will need to visit Schoology booth to find out more.

Teachers and Technology and QR codes

I've just finished helping the professional development director for the diocese do five different tech workshops for teachers. We did two workshops on using the SmartBoard, one on using QR codes in the classroom, one for ELA projects using the iPad and then Encouraging Writing with Weebly. Everyday went very well. I was quite pleased and I think all in attendance were too. I was also happy to see a nice group from my school present. Yippee!

My favorite of the week though was our QR Code workshop. We sent our participants on a sort of QR Scavenger hunt that led them through different ways to use a QR code. I know some people think QR codes are old but they are simple to make and easy to use and that my friend is what teachers will actually use.

Of the many ways to use QR codes there were two that I would use. One- put a QR code on homework that when scanned will take a student to a tutorial to help them remember how to do their assignment. The tutorial could be teacher created or linked to a video elsewhere or maybe a website with a game to help them.

The second one that I think is brilliant is to put a QR code in the front of a student's take home folder or whatever they use. The QR code is linked to the homework assignments for the day, week, month, whatever you choose. No excuse for not knowing the homework! You could even have a QR printed out for the parents to hang on the fridge so they could scan it. Too many uses!

**hint hint** did you scan the code?

Writing and more

My original goal for writing was once a week. And then I realized that was not realistic so I went for once a month and often I was able to manage more than that but....yeah here we are...June..and I haven't posted since March. Needless to say I think I fell off the earth for a while. It has been a very busy spring but I'm back and I once again make my blogging promise to post a minimum of once a month. I will try to make up for my lack of attention to my writing.

So I guess this post is my apology and whining for being such a slacker. I could go on and on about the reasons I have not written and there are plenty of mostly legitimate excuses. But truth be told I suppose it's just life and living that gets in the way sometimes! It's all good though.

Enough of my noise. Moving on!

And BTW- is that not a cool dragon? Phillip Martin Clip Art one of the best collections of free clip art. Beautifully done and so many choices.