I sometimes wonder whether the traditional conference format – presenter at the front of the room dishing out loads of information to eager, yet passive, session attendees – works in this day in age. While I certainly struggle in most of these kinds of presentations, I was able to gather some useful information related to the initiatives I am involved in at school. With this post, I share some of the resources I learned about while at PETE&C this year. The focus of this post is on sharing the resources with limited to no commentary on the various presentations.
Session: iPadding the Road to Success for All Learners
- iPad2Educate wiki – This resource contains links to applications the presenters and participants evaluated in almost all content areas. The wiki also contains information on how to set up an iTunes account, what peripherals are available for the iPad, how to go about evaluating apps, how to manage apps through the volume purchasing program, how to manage accounts using the iPhone Configuration Uitility, using Pages to develop ePub formatted documents, and
- iPad2Educate Diigo group – There are several iPad in education type groups on Diigo, but this specific group is associated with the PETE&C presentation.
Session: How to Develop Mobile Apps for the Classroom
- Presentation by Ray Pastore – The early part of the presentation asks the questions: What is mLearning? Why use mobile devices in education? How is mLearning be used in education? The remainder of the presentation focuses on creating apps for the Android using Google’s App Inventor. Note: The App Inventor tool will work at developing apps only for Android, not for iPod, iPhone or iPad. That being said, the tool is still a valuable way to introduce students to programming apps.
Session: Edmodo: An Online Classroom Platform for Free
- Edmodo: Online Classrooms Made Easy wiki – This session demonstrated and provided the ins and outs of a tool that could be described as the Facebook of education. Here is a good overview video to learn more about Edmodo. While this was a good introduction to the tool, I wanted to see what the presenter was actually doing with students in the classroom.
Session: iPad: Personalizing Learning, Creating and Sharing
- iPad Apps for the Classroom – This session was presented by Marco Torres and focused on apps with the capability to allow students to create.
I downloaded a few to new ones to my iPad: iThoughts, Discover – Wikipedia in a Magazine and MyCongress.
Session: Panel Discussion – Future Focus
- Consisting of Joyce Valenza, Steve Hargadon and Vicki Davis, the discussion focused on some of the most interesting and innovative ideas in education reform. Unfortunately, there never seems to be enough talk about how we do these things in a one-hour session.
Session: How Educational Leaders Keep Their Edge
- Links to help keep your edge. Plenty of good content to add to your RSS reader.
Session: The Profound Impact of Technology in Schools
- Wiki. The Woodland Hills School District created a technology-focused academy within their school district.
Session: Deploying iPad and iOS in Education
- Wiki – Useful resources on the management of iPads in education.
Session: Apple’s Blended Learning Environment
- Wiki – More information on using the ePub format.
Session: Passport to the Best Educational Ideas in the World
- Link to Handout – Gary Stager is one of the most call-it-like-it-is thinkers in education. This presentation focused on the possibilities of creating truly authentic learning experiences. What I like most about Gary’s presentations is that the tools and toys take a back seat to the 36,000 foot thinking backed by real-world examples of what can be done. Here is a link Gary shared to other resources on his web site.
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