WEMTA

It's amazing the inspiration you get from attending a conference. I have all of these thoughts swirling through my head! Let me share a few...

I have added many sites to my del.icio.us site (on the right). If you don't have a delicious site, we need to talk!

I saw two spectacular presenters named John Pederson, Jennifer Wagner and David Jakes called "Really Cool New Tool Trio Face Off" They had some AWESOME sites and tools. I will let you check out their sites, but the ones I think I could use right away is Google Spreadsheet with forms and ZoomIt. I already use Creative Commons/Flickr with my 3rd/4th graders and it has been a wonderful resource for copyright free images for our Powerpoint and Photostory projects. (You can also use Creative Commons for music and video files.) These guys were really fun. They showed us the tools and entertained us at the same time!

I saw a good differentiation presentation by an 8th grade teacher and the GT teacher from Silver Lake, WI. They used Blooms Taxonomy and the multiple intelligences to put together an excellent unit on the Civil Rights Movement. Spectacular! We are so powerful as a team!
They let the students choose the project. They are responsible for their own learning and the teacher is the facilitator! One of the 4th grade teachers I work with, Margo VandeZande, allowed her 4th graders to choose their project for their Native American unit and it is AMAZING to watch the learning that took place(and the fun!).

David Jakes talked about how students are networking online through blogs/wikis/social networking sites and that we need to use these tools to facilitate their learning. It's time for a change in how we teach. We need to extend our classroom past the walls. Let's go global!