Jessica+O'Gorman+PETE&C

Monday February 9, 2009 Keynote address: The address was dynamic and inspiring. The focus was on digital storytelling and 21st century skills in schools. I took away from the address a desire to use digital storytelling as an authentic assessment for my students.

Session 1: Web 2.0 for Reading and Writing This session focused mostly on varying tools for assessment and active reading. This session was crowded and noisy, and the presenters moved quickly through a number of sites that may be used in classes. The sites are listed below and the link to the session wiki is listed as well. pandora.com- music site Comics- bitstrips.com pixton.com Books- tikatok.com webook.com Audiobooks- kids.audible.com wikibooks.org Ning.com Social networking tool PBwiki.com -audacity and podcasts

Session wiki- esu_reading.wikispaces.com

Session 2: Differentiated Instruction with technology Session wiki- teach20.wikispaces.com/ DIPD Again, this session included a number of tools to us to reach the needs of different learners. zoho.com- surveys/ polls pollseverhwere.com- polls using cellphones yugma.com online collaboration bubbleshare.com- comics comicbrush.com- comics sumopaint- online art tool

Session 3: Using Scratch in the Classroom This session was designed as a quick beginners guide to Scratch. Scratch is a programming tool that can be used to create games, stories, videos, etc. Scratch is a fairly easy tool to be used to teacher beginning programming. The presenters used the term "legos" to describe how it works. It is a pre-cursor to java programming.

scratch.mit.edu

The site can also be searched to find what others have created. Once you find something you like, you can manipulate it, or remix it, to fit your needs.