Teachers & Technology-Transforming Learning Together

I am here at the Hotel Roanoke for the 2008 VSTE conference. It started yesterday, Sunday, 2/24 and ends on Tuesday,2/26. What a great conference it has been so far! A great keynote presentation was given by Hall Davidson from Discovery Education before a wonderful Hillbilly Hoedown meal was served.This morning 's first session is on Universal Design and Web 2.0. The website containing the presentation information can be found at http://udl4literacy.pbwiki.com/FrontPage. Check out the VOKI link-looks really cool, something the kids will enjoy! A great presentation to start the day off!My second session is focusing on math. The presenter is Tammy Worcester from Tammy’s Technology Tips for Teachers. Her session is titled “Math+Technology=Learning”. The first math activity she showed is a math glyph. Using PowerPoint, students use the drawing tools to create a glyph that describes them. Once students draw and print their glyphs, they can compare and contrast their glyphs with their classmates, creating math data to work with. Her second activity provided several tips when using PowerPoint’s drawing tools. Tip #1-while holding down the CTRL key, you can click and drag to quickly duplicate the shape. Tip #2-before printing handouts, change the page orientation to landscape-the handout slides will be a little bit bigger.

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Integrating technology into a classroom can be a frightening and overwhelming experience. “Where do I start?”, “What do I do?”, “What resources are available?” are questions many teachers ask when they embark upon this journey. I have worked in the field of educational techology for the previous 10 years (and counting!), with elementary students and their teachers and now with pre-service education students. It is my pleasure to share with you the resources I have gathered on my educational technology journey.