From the Sides-lines

Today is the first day of TCEA for me.  I arrived late last night so I was able to get up bright and early this morning (5:30 am) so that I could get to the Convention Center in Austin traffic in time for my interview with the @SimpleK12 girls, Liz and Lisa. Sadly, the press room was hidden and I spent 30 minutes looking for them.  However, they were very gracious when I finally did arrive about my tardiness. To top it off, they were nice enough to give me a “I Heart EdTech” t-shirt.  Cool!  I really do heart EdTech!

Next I went to the opening session and listened to Christopher Gardner whose life was portrayed in the movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness.”  He was absolutely amazing!  And inspiration! And motivational!  If you were at TCEA and missed it, you can read my recap of his speech here.

After the opening session, I attended a model classroom session titled, “21st Century Learning for 21st Century Kids.”  While not everything that they presneted during the session was new to me (she spoke about Kerpoof.com and I am currently using that with my 5th graders), I did learn quite a few new things. For example, they use Moodle quite a bit with their elementary students (older elementary – 3rd-5th grade).  We currently use it for professional development and for high school students, but I would love to see it incorporated into the elementary level.  Moodle is truly an outstanding tool and we are not yet utilizing it to its full potential.  *As a side note, if anyone knows of any good resources for or examples of the use of Moodle in the elementary school, please let me know!  I would greatly appreciate it!

I also learned about the use of Google Docs in the classroom and some of the cool things that you can do with it such as make polls and forms for students to answer questions on.  The best part about these forms is that you can instantly pull up a graph of the responses.  I was aware of the collaborative nature of Google Docs, but unaware of the forms.  I will definitely begin to use this free resource more in classroom.

I attended a few other sessions today and came away with some great FREE websites that I think you’ll be interested to know about.  These include:

• Vocaroo.com - Allows you to record audio online with a microphone.  Then it gives you HTML code for embedding as well as a link.
• TodaysMeet.com - This is a free chat room site.  You can also allow those in the room to view a specific twitter hashtag so it becomes a backchannel.
• CommunityClips – This site allows you to record audio (with a microphone), as well video.  Like Camtasia, but FREE!
• Manybooks.net - audio and video e-books
• Next Vista for Learning - an online library of videos for classrooms
• SAILOn (Subject Area Interactive Lessons Online) – interactive links organized by grade level, subject, and TEKS.

I also found a solution to our current TPRI/Palm problem.  Ok, so maybe I didn’t find the solution myself, but it still solves the problem.  We are currently using Palm handhelds to administer our TPRI.  However, they are quickly dying.  As of right now, Wireless Generation does not have plans to go with iPhones, iTouches, iPods, or other items of this nature (or should I say, items that we currently have). I found one solution by Tango for the iTouch, but it requires Safari and our wifi network will not support Safari at this time.  So @betmcn found another great solution at where else but the Wireless Generation booth!  They are making little touchscreens that attach to a computer for the whopping price of $85!  It basically just allows you to turn your laptop or desktop into a  touchpad for administering the TPRI so that you aren’t having to mess with a mouse. It connects via a USB cable. Since it runs from the web, you don’t have to download a special program for the palm and sync it.  In addition, you wouldn’t have to purchase a separate one for each teacher as you currently do with the Palm (at least I want them to each have their own since you have to change usernames, passwords, etc. every time you switch users).

Finally, I ended up at the TCEA Tweetup.  I met several people whom I follow on Twitter face to face, and was able to connect with new like minded individuals.  Not only did we have fun, but we also had some great edtech conversations tonight.  I can’t really get that at home, so this was a very special evening for me.

I had a great first day of learning at TCEA.  I hope that tomorrow will be just as eventful, fun, and resourceful! Be sure to follow my tweets at @kunami10 to get the lastest updates throughout the conference!