NECC 09-Day #1

Now is a time for me to learn as an educator, so I can go out and teach other teachers about 21st century skills and how to apply those skills within the classroom. NECC is a great opportunity to learn from others and to social network. The whole experience is very motivating, exciting, and it gives me a charge that I need to continue to move forward with "new" ideas to learn, share, and teach to others!!!!!

Ideas Learned at NECC 09 Saturday Workshop:
17 Free Software Tools for the 21st Century Classroom

Here are a few things I have learned about in my workshop. Dr. DiBlasi shared a site called polleverywhere.com. It is a free application that can be used to create questions for a poll. Students use their cell phone to text in their answers to the poll and you can see the results on the web. A teacher could also collect data while interacting with students in the classroom. It is very cool and a great way to have students use their cell phones. Students actually using their cell phones? Now there is a novel idea!

Web 2.0-100 Tools for Teachers:
http://snurl.com/web2tools
You will find links and explanations of over 100 Web 2.0 tools that teachers can use in their classroom. A great resource for teachers to access online.

Twitter:
Twitter is a mini-blogging platform with messages (tweets) that can be sent up to 140 characters.

Dr. Howie gave the example of how a teacher uses twitter with her students' parents in the classroom. I really like this idea of teachers using this web 2.0 tool as a way of communication with parents. Twitter is used to post assignments due, projects, events happening, etc. in the classroom for parents. Could an elementary teacher use Twitter with her students' parents? Absolutely!!!!

Twitter for Beginners - 5 Things to Do as a New Twitter User
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/07/26/twitter-for-beginners-5-things-to-do-as-a-new-twitter-user/
I thought this article was very helpful about how to become a "twitterer."

TweetDeck is an application that will allow you to set up your friends, acknowledgments and direct messages for your twitter connections. I really like this application because it helped me organize my tweets in a way where I wasn't overwhelmed. Another bonus, I can also add the app to my iPhone. Love Tweetdeck!!!!! It can be downloaded for free at http://tweetdeck.com/beta/. Dr. Howie DiBlasi personally showed me how to set up tweetdeck and it actually made sense to me. I'm going to download the program and actually use it!!!! He also showed me tweetpics and how you can share pics on Twitter.

Here is Dr. Howie's web page, which is full of information. What I liked about him is that he was all about sharing. This is exactly what all educators should be doing. Networking! Sharing!

"'It is today we must create the world of the future.'"

-Eleanor Roosevelt