Sunday, March 4, 2007

Blog Post #4

IL-TCE Presents
Think Outside the Box and Wires 2007 Conference
www.il-tce.org & www.iceberg.org

On March 1st and 2nd I was at the ICE Conference held at Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, Illinois. It was a huge gathering of "tech" people. I tried to attend as many sessions as possible and I would like to share them with you.

My Friend Flickr http://homepage.mac.com/charlenechausis/flickr.htm
presented by Charlene Chausis who was awarded the ICE Educator of the Year for 2007.
Chausis uses the Flickr site for her personal photos as well as for educational purposes. Visit the link above for the handout with numerous links.

Celebrating National Poetry Month With Our Classmates, Our School and the World!
presented by Roxana Hadad, Northwestern University.
This is part of a collaboratory project to connect students and teachers with others around the country. Registration is required and everything is free. Since April is poetry month this is a great opportunity for students to share their poetry online with others. There are other sponsored projects to explore at http://collaboratory.nunet.net

Using Wikis in the Classroom
presented by Adam Frey, Wikispaces.
Adam explained the many uses of wikis and how they can be used in the classroom. Wikis are great for teachers and students to work together in the classroom. Wikispaces claims to be free of ads and with no space or usage limits. For K-12 educators starting a wiki is free for others there is a nominal charge. http://wikispaces.com/t/x/teachers

The 10 Best Free Web 2.0 Sites
presented by Steve Dembo, Discovery Education.
This session was quite crowded and Steve was a fast talker with a ton of information. Here is a list of a few free sites that he mentioned:
www.vyew.com
Vyew provides a virtual space to share and work together.
www.gcast.com
This is a sister site to Garage Band. It claims to make personal broadcasting simple.
www.archive.org
The Internet archive. This is a digital library of Internet sites. This is a free access site.

Telling Your Story
presented by Jason Ohler; www.jasonohler.com
Storytelling has been around for thousands of years and Jason Ohler gave lively examples of how to use his techniques to actively engage kids in the art of storytelling regardless of your tech abilities and equipment limitations.

These are just a few of the interesting speakers I had the pleasure to listen to. The information is applicable to all librarians to stay informed about new technologies. This was a wonderful opportunity to meet and share ideas with technology educators.

3 comments:

claudia said...

Marita,

What a great opportunity! Was it your decision to participate or did CPS encourage teachers/librarians to attend? Wasn't it great having a knowledge and awareness of the topics discussed?

Claudia

BookmobilebabeJody said...

Marita,

What a great presentation on flickr. I am going to go home and listen to it to get a better background for our presentation next week!

Wonderful resources!

wantonlife said...

Thanks for sharing conference details. Especially since not everyone can attend every conference, blogs are an ideal way to share what you learned, what you saw, etc. With library budgets always being tight, we have to rely on our colleagues to bring back (or bring online!) what they've learned.