Reflection on Day One Sessions
Dr. Linda A. Gregg on Bridge the Achievement Gap through Technology
Dr. Gregg works for an educational consulting company that works with struggling learners who are below grade level for a variety of reasons. The approach is what I think was best in the presentation. She discussed how they do a pre and post-assessment. Once you know what standard they need to be taught, you deconstruct the standard to the objective into the cognitive skill being taught, then find online activities to teach. Because she was an early adopter, of these, many of her links and online tools were pay, but we had some great discussions about the relative merits of tools that you pay for, vs. some free versions (there are some bells and whistles you get with the pay tools sometimes).
:: The Leadership and Learning Center ::
My own session on tech for English language development with English language learners went pretty well. I filled about 2/3rds of the seats. The audience was largely educators, administrators, and others working with ELD students, not techies. I was able to breeze through the theory portion based on this. There were a couple of out of state folks so I did a brief explanation of how ELL (English Language Learner) instruction is different in California, cause we’re special :-). I then showed examples of projects and activities that I had down that were directly tied into ELD standards, and used “best practices”. I did some short demos of how to use some of these tools (flickr advanced search, Voice Thread, recording in Power Point (not recommended) and in Audacity (much better). I showed some units from soup to nuts, and how I used BrainPop effectively (as an intro to subject to build background) another teacher said she used that as a summary at the end of a unit, and played a podcast my students had done of a readers theatre. We then wrapped up with copyright considerations in posting “stories” that students write as extensions of a copyrighted work, and I introduced the concept of transformation. I finished up with recommendations for sessions that would show how-to, since mine was more about why and the big picture of how. The audience seemed to be engaged and received what I had to say well. I felt like I was in a good groove, so I was happy at the end of it. I would recommend this for people teaching special.
Session post
Kathy Hobbs is a newly retired teacher from Florida (a Master Digital Educator). Here presentation was Project Based Learning + Animation. This was a very well done intro to film making with students, but not as useful for me because I knew most of it already. I did get a take away, which was the nice example of a student story board. I think I need exemplars of this when I restart film making with students, I will have lots of those. I would recommend this presentation for those working with students below grade-level.
Cheryl Lemke’s presentation was about teaching critical thinking. This was what I’ll call a “deep thinking” session. I would say the main point was it’s not just about technology, and it’s not just what they are doing, it’s HOW they are doing it. She shared a number of projects (that are in my live blog and her session handouts below). It goes without saying, this skills are critical for modern life. My take-away, scaffolding is not just for students, teachers need to be taught how to teach this way.
