Discovery Fall VirtCon 2013

The morning is over with and now we are taking a break from all the information we are absorbing. It has been a great morning here at Cardinal Gibbons High School. Teachers from different Diocesan Schools are attending our F2F event. Collaboration is the word of the day.

Two rooms are going, so everyone can enjoy presentations. Steve Dembo prepared us for the day with some trivia and prizes. Great start.

The 9 am presentation was given by Troy Hicks a English professor from Michigan University. He teaches classes to help students integrate technology and writing in their education. He used his book Crafting Digital Writing as a resource for his talk. His wiki website  is a companion website to his book. It contains different resources and links for chapters in his book.  He discusses the five types of digital writing; Web-based texts, Presentations, Audio texts, Video texts and Social media. During his talk he presents different components of craft, discussing each one and giving examples of each. Very informative and helpful to implementing Common Core. I would recommend people watch his talk if they are interested in getting ideas for using technology for writing.

At 10 am we split into two groups, one group watched the session on “One Session, Four Lessons: Meeting Individual Needs in a Science Classroom”. Michael Bryant did an awesome job explaining different components of the Science Techbook for all grade levels. The other group watched the “Back-to-School with Discovery and some new Techniques and Tools” with Rita Morenson.  Definitely a hit among our elementary and middle school teachers. I had the opportunity to see Ms. Morenson on a Google Hangout about the uses of Google Hangout.  She posted her presentation on a google drive to share with everyone. I will tell you this presentation had tons of tools for technology. Our teachers were especially loving the QR codes section. Also the coLar App became the hit of the day. We printed out different pictures and tested our phones. Amazing what technology can do.

11 am brought another session of techbook and “Free & Easy Ways to Wow Your Students and Parents” . I hate to admit this but some of us continued to work with the tools Rita Morenson shared. Others tried to concentrate on the next sessions.  Heidi Morgan did an awesome job introducing Blogger and The App Builder. And again QR Codes were a big hit. Ms. Morgan posted her presentation on a google document.

After lunch we came back and joined the next 1 pm session.  Again our one room hosted the sessions on techbooks, with Brad Fountain. The other session was Full S.T.E.A.M. ahead  with David Fisher. Simple tools were introduced such as Smart Recorder and Quick Voice, both apps you can use on your smartphone to record various content.  Today’s Meet is another tool you can use in class for class conversation and discussion on topics. Tons of other tools were introduced during this session. If you missed any of the archived presentations you can access them at virtconlive.com.

I think I’ll end here and watch the next few sessions with everyone. The day is almost at an end and so far we have excited and thankful teachers for all the information shared today.