I heard about a neat website that takes your Twitter followers or those you follow and makes them into a shirt (website here) and I just had to have one. I customized mine with the code listed there and some help from a screen capture program to pick people I thought I’d likely meet at NECC 2009. As it happens, I did meet many people on that shirt at NECC, and Kristin Hokanson was armed with her digital camera.
So, thanks to her, I present to you “I’m Following YOU at NECC”:
Well… it’s been a few days since NECC. Time for reflection and to decide what to take from my experiences there. I attended a few excellent “paid for” sessions and I plan to use what I learned to make my classroom better and my students more active learners:
I must admit that this session was my second choice – Apple canceled their “Panther” preview. And I also must admit that I attended this session thinking that I already knew how to create ePortfolios – I have mine online and I have my students create their own. And while I wasn’t surprised that she suggested using a Web 2.0 tool like Wikispaces, I was impressed by her presentation and her suggestion to build a “matrix” that viewers can look at. Building on her “portfolio at a glance” page, Dr. Barrett created a table in Wikispaces that highlights the skills and disciplines that she is demonstrating on the wiki. Since a Web 2.0 portfolio is hyperlink-able, she makes her “Artifacts” a logical starting point instead of just a footnote. See here: Artifacts Page
You can bet that I’ll take this “next level” with my portfolio, likely following Dr. Barrett’s “How to Create an Interactive ePortfolio” – and then extend that to my students’ portfolios.
First of all, I just want to say that I want to move to Phoenix to study under Dr. Christie. She is the neatest prof I’ve met – full of energy and ALL about learning (she echoed what I heard time and time again at NECC: “it’s not about the technology”). Dr. Christie is preparing educators for School 2.0 in a BIG way.
This session was not so much about how to use a GPS and more about how to use a GPS and GeoCaching in a multidisciplinary environment. For instance, a language arts teacher could use GeoCaching to teach parts of speech. Or a Math teacher could use it to teach formulas. Pretty much any subject can be used. While I could try to explain exactly how, Dr. Christie does it so much better on her “Educators Guide to GeoCaching”.
So I have a few GPS units I bought with a grant from the Bureau of Career & Tech Ed at the PA Dept of Education. I have taught my kids how to “use” them, but now I know how to teach my kids my classroom concepts, from vocabulary to IP Addressing to…. it’s infinite!
