METC

I am so thankful to have had to opportunity to attend the METC conference on Tuesday.  It was really inspiring to be around so many people who are already doing such great things in their classrooms and are willing to share their ideas.  The presenters were so knowledgable and gave a lot of opportunities for others to share their ideas and experiences.

I attended 4 sessions (one was a two hour session).  The first session I attended was Exploring the Wide World of Web 2.0 with Julie Tonsing-Meyer from McKendree University.  She shared with us tools like Poll anywhere, Glogster, Voki, Class Dojo, Screencast o Matic, and Remind 101.  Through the MET program I feel like we have already learned about most of these tools, but it was nice to have a quick refresher on them.  I am going to look into using Remind 101.  I have tried in the past to get my parents to sign up for Twitter with little success.  This would give me another way to send them reminders (without giving out my phone number!).  

The second session I attended/facilitated was 10 apps, 4 students, 1 teacher with Beth Phillips and her students at Francis Howell.  In this presentation most of the apps that were suggested were better suited for secondary education but I was able to think of a few ways to use them in my elementary classroom. The one I am the most excited about is Explain Everything.  We use Making Meaning as our core Com Arts curriculum.  Unfortunately if the students are absent, they may miss out on hearing a part of a story.  With Explain Everything you can upload a story, document, or presentation and record your voice with it.  I would love to be able to record our Making Meaning stories for our lower readers to use during intervention times.  Some of the other apps the students suggested were Evernote, My Homework, Notability, Task, Flashcard +, Pic Stitch, Voice Thread, and Sound Cloud.

The third session I facilitated/attended was Reading, Responding, and Researching using tablets with the Reluctant Reader with Julie Otey, Melissa Biehl, and Tom Swoboda.  In this session they explained how them implemented the use of Nook Tablets in a second grade classroom to increase student engagement, motivation, and vocabulary.  Legitimately it makes a ton of sense using a program like Nook and eReaders.  I have found that my students are not honest with themselves about what words they do not know when they are reading.  With Nook the students can highlight a word and look up its meaning or search it to get an image.  While I think that it would take a lot of training and trust with the students I think they would really benefit from using eReaders like this.  Julie also explained to us how she uses Edmodo with her students every day to do a stop and jot.  She showed us many features that I didn't realize you could use in Edmodo.  I am going to set up my class as soon as I finish with this blog post so that we can start using it tomorrow!

The final session I attended was Develop Meaningful iPad Creation-Based Experiences for Students with Jennifer Panganiban and Chrissie Edwards from the Decatur School District.  These were probably two of the most passionate women that I saw all day.  They were so excited about what they do, and full of good ideas it was amazing!  I finally know what the SAMR model is and that we need to moving towards the M and R in this model.  We want to be redefining what we are doing in our classrooms, not just using technology as a babysitting tool.  The most important thing they shared with us was that when working with technology you need to use backwards design.  Decide on what it is the students need to learn and then decide on which tool would best be used.  Don't go to your technology facilitator and say I want to use______ (whatever app) and hope for the best.  Some of the great Apps they shared with us included Popplet (like inspiration), Educreations, Splice, Skitch, and Poll Anywhere.  

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to attend and be a part of this incredible day.  I have already told our technology facilitator that I want to go back next year!!!