Exhibit Hall Finds @CUE 2011

COOL FINDS on Friday
I found a neat exhibit / website that helps you and your students collaborize.  It is called Collaborize Classroom.  (http://collaborizeclassroom.com/) You can sign up for FREE!  It has many great functions to use with your students and your lessons. (No, I am not getting any reimbursements from them)
From their website: 
Why Collaborize Classroom?
Collaborize Classroom is designed to complement classroom instruction and engage students in online activities, assignments and discussions that allow for deeper participation inside and outside the classroom.
•Do more with less. Allow your students to participate on their own time with an easy-to-use platform.

•Enrich your curriculum with multimedia. Embed Microsoft Office documents, videos, pictures, and PDFs.

•Give every student a voice. Teach students how to have productive, respectful and supportive discussions online.

•Publish discussions to a results page so students can see tangible outcomes of their conversations.

•Access detailed student participation reports that make grading easy!

•Download FREE lesson plans to help get you started.

• The next cool thing is an Interactive White Board.... Star Board Link by Hitachi (http://www.hitachisolutions-us.com/starboard/tcea ) 
• make any hard surface interactive
• can be mobile
• $749
• can buy a pad to walk around and write for an additional $250
• ALLOWS FOR UP TO 3 USERS TO WRITE ON BOARD!!
• hand movements to write, zoom in /out, scroll

IQuest presents STEM resources

First session of the day gave me numerous online STEM RESOURCES. I have used the roller coaster interactivity at Funderstanding with my students before building Knex coasters and found it valuable. Go to http://www.funderstanding.com/coaster
Students can manipulate height, parts, speed, and record their findings on a spreadsheet. Another Physical Science interactivity is from PHET, called Moving Man. http://PHET.Colorado.edu/en/simulation/moving-man . Same principles of manipulation and recording of data. More soon!

CUE 2011

Palm Springs is engaging Ed Tech leaders with great workshops, keynotes, and vendors hall. I am here at The CUE Conference as a learner and presenter. I come here for inspiration and innovation and leave with a brain spinning with ideas and plans. If you haven't already, take a look at CUE http://cue.org. Check out http://kerncue.org for more updates from Kern CUE on fantastic things we have seen here at the CUE Conference.

Updates from Other Great Blogs

I was looking through my PLN blogs and saw a couple websites that I wanted to share.
From Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers-
Rocks and Weathering - a great interactive activity to use with students to learn about rocks.  It shows how different types of rocks form and provides for students to create, inspect, and destroy rocks using different tools.  It also can be captioned (see top menu of website) for those who are Deaf, hard of hearing, ESL, or simply like the captions.  This could be used on individual computers or as an interactive whiteboard activity.


From Digital Goonies -
Wikicards.net is a great way to organize your information and be able to share it with others.  You can create as many cards as you want and organize them into groups.  You can put links, jpegs, videos on the cards and group them under one heading.  You could use this to build your resources for a unit and then share it with your fellow teachers.   Here is an example of using Wikicards from Digital Goonies.

That's all for now.   I am attending two conferences in the next two weeks and hope to have more to share!  CAL-ED for Deaf Educators in California and CUE - Computer Using Educators big conference in Palm Springs! 

Literacy Centers and Games Based Learning

I was recently catching up on my Twitter PLN. *Quick explanation for those not yet using Twitter to develop professional ideas - I follow #edchat, #spedchat, #edtech, #technology, #kerncue as well as some others to share and get ideas with other educators. * I came across this teacher blog, Better Than Worksheets  (http://www.betterthanworksheets.com/ ).  The blog is written by two teachers, Julie Johnson and Patrick Johnson. 

I was looking around and found two other wonderful parts to this blog, Pop Lit Station and Game Based Learning, developed by Julie.  Julie has some create ideas and has taken action to get them implemented.  (Way to go, Julie!!)  Games Based Learning has some great links and activities to do with your students to develop language, math, Science, PE, and other subject area skills through playing some Wii games.

Pop Lit Station is for the teachers/students in Julie's district, although others may view, please read the note to Out of School Visitors.  Julie uses videos and Google forms with activities for students to complete.  The responses are collected on a spreadsheet for Julie to view and give the students credit for completing.  What a great idea! 

Julie addresses the district standards in creating her activities.  The point to both of these sites is to encourage teachers to try new things to reach students who struggle in school.  Although Special Ed and ESL students could benefit especially, ALL students would benefit from using these approaches.

I think I am going to try out these ideas.  I'll get back to you!

A Field Trip to a State Park WITHOUT the Travel!

An out of town trip for your class?  Doesn't happen very often in this age of restricted budgets.  Even if you do have the funds, traveling more than a few hours wouldn't be possible... until now!

Have you heard of PORTS? Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students is a great program from California State Parks that brings resources, lesson plans, and videoconferences to teachers and students.  Check out their website (http://ports.parks.ca.gov/ ) for more information on specific programs and resources that they can offer you.  In most cases, they can even lend you the equipment needed for the videoconferencing.

Imagine learning about plants and animals (see your state standards) and being able to take your students on a field trip led by naturalist to make discoveries. 

Check it out and get more information by contacting one of the program managers on the right side menu.  I'm excited to say that my class will be taking a trip to the Redwoods in a couple weeks - via videoconferencing.  I will report back in a couple weeks on how it went!

Better Efficiency? Better Time Management? YOU BET!

I was taking time to read up on my Twitter feeds and working on my own Professional Learning Network when I came across 50 Ways to Use Google Apps in the Classroom, a presentation being done at the TCEA Conference.  I followed the link to the presentation (http://ht.ly/3REm8  ) and was happy with what I saw; Great Ideas!

We recently held a Google for Educators Mini-Workshop @ Kern CUE presented by Jim Ross and Nick Rowland.  So the thought of furthering the wealth of information was on my mind, too. 

I am a Google Apps user and use the Gmail, Documents, Calendar for both my own classroom, personal life, and for the organization Kern CUE.  There is so much in Google Apps for educators to use for themselves and also for their students.  And Google Apps gives you and your students a "universal" word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation program that requires only internet access.  You can even access Google apps from your smartphone.

Take a look at this presentation.  It has links and further explanations within the presentation.  Feel free to comment on how you have been using Google Apps or how you hope to use it in the future!

(And by the way, I am receiving no monetary compensation for telling you about Google or any other websites or books that I mention.)
Thanks to RT by EdTechSandyK for this link!