Notes from the Edge--NCTIES 2011

The following are my notes from the North Carolina Technology in Education Conference (NCTIES) this Year.  It was excellent as always, and I am trying to wrap my head around what were the top things I learned:

http://tjmstechtips.blogspot.com/2011/03/ncties-2011.html

My Current Top 5 things from the conference (this is tentative--I will probably discover more and discount others as I read more thoroughly through my notes!)

1) Tammy worcester is always a great speaker to attend, and I have already incorporated two things from her session on adding gadgets to a blog : (I added a google translate widget and also "a page/tab" (I added the note on spam from this week's TBT as a separate page/tab since I get a lot of questions on that from parents) to our tjms weekly memo blog --that was exciting! But Tammy's section on widgets is what I really want to go through in more detail.

2)  E-readers:  My friend, Jennifer Lagarde gave a great presentation on E-books ( http://lib-girl.blogspot.com/2011/03/hooked-on-ebooks-presentation-for.html ) , and it inspired me to at least try them at my school--She provided some great resources ( http://edukindle.ning.com/ ) that are already out there and how people are using them. I have written a donor's choose grant, and am going to "keep on" my EC teachers to try the same :)


3) The session on Prezi reminded me how cool of a presentation resource Prezi is, and I want to revisit Prezi with teachers, and show them some of the cool new features that have been added recently.

4) Things I really want to try or revisit these tools (okay I know this raises my "top 5" to more):

• http://www.rockmelt.com/  (platform for managing your
• browser/feeds, etc)
• http://mckeon.edu.glogster.com/ncties-presentation/ (want to revisit with my 6th and 7th grade)
• http://www.formatoz.com/  (suggested by Barbara Sasso for converting youtube videos and other video formats to ones that will work with movie maker)
• http://primarypad.com/  (place to take notes in the cloud)

5) Lastly, an overall theme that I was reminded of was:  to Choose 2-3 tools and committ to them...It's easy to get overwhelmed or feel guilty about what you are using or not using, but if the tools are good For example, google docs maybe as good as drop box--one is not necessarily better than the other--just different options)  I also want the IPAD2 !!

I will be sharing more in the weeks and months to come!