Technology Leaders Institute 2013

Had the opportunity to attend a two day workshop at The Friday Institute at NC State University for Technology. Since our school is working on an 1:1 initiative, we are trying to educate ourselves on different technological tools that can be used in the classroom.  The workshop is part of the Institutes Digital Learning Collaborative.  By the time the first day ended, I had a better feel for the Google world and its uses.

Before our breakout sessions we had the opportunity to listen to Lucas Gillispie, a local NC teacher and technology coordinator. His talk centered on the topic “Imagine What’s Right Around the Corner”, what future technology was being developed. He is an advocate of gaming and education, his website Edurealms hosts a ton of information about different games that relate to education. His talk was very informative, the future is moving towards technology such as “Goolge” Glass.  His talk gave me a few ideas about how to use games in the classroom. For the science festival I had already planned on using the xbox 360 to play the Mars Curiosity game that was developed by NASA. Well maybe this would be a good thing to use in class. Idea? Yep. I’m also talking to our gaming teacher about creating a Forensic game. Thanks to Mr. Gillispie the ideas are popping up, its just implementing them that will be the challenge.

After our keynote speaker we  broke into sessions, or as they called them table talks. My first session was about QR codes…

The session was awesome and collaboration was the word of the session. Coming together we came up with a ton of ideas and projects. Very exciting! Kudos to Lisa Hervey for a great presentation and resources she introduced. I found that the QR reader she introduced was much more powerful then the QR Droid code I had on my phone. After downloading i-nigma, we created our own QR codes. For this we used Unitag. I came to find these tools very useful.  The main point behind the presentation was how teachers can use this tool to help students reflect on their work. When I thought about it I could have QR codes posted for different parts of a lab.  My colleague (English Teacher Tracy) came up with a great idea, she created an google document on her google drive and used the QR code to direct her to students to the document to add their answers to reflection questions. Great idea!!

Second session was a very informative session about google ,

 

During this session we were introduced to google plus and other features of google. One of the features I was introduced to was the data that google collects and keeps an eye when you use google on your phone.  Curious? Check it out you account dashboard. Good thing to know and find out about. The other functions we were introduced to were the  Data functions of google. A useful tool for teachers when comparing different sets of data., the public data search could be very useful.  Again a good session.

The last session of the day that I attended discussed different uses of google

Totally awesome sites to use for students to investigate different world moments, art projects and world wonders. Great use of google maps and earth.  I thought of my history and art teacher colleagues.

Google seemed to be the word of the day. It was a good connecting and collaborating day.

Day two wasn’t as interesting so I’ll leave off here. We will be back at the NC State Friday Institute for our professional development.