FETC 2010 Slideshow

Ed Begley Jr. was the guest speaker at FETC this year. He shared that it was possible to "Go Green" even in the areas of
technology and gave many examples of how going green had actually saved businesses money. There were many technology vendors on the floor and new hardware and software to discover. I also discovered lots of new and useful websites. In my next few posts I will be sharing some of these with you.

Storybird

Storybird is a collaborative storytelling site where students can create, read, and share stories based on artwork that exists at the site. When you get to the site click on "Take the Tour" to see all the opportunities for interacting with this site. Artwork for the stories can be chosen by tagged themes. Students can collaborate to create stories together, individually, or as a class. This is a cool site that incorporates lots of 21st century learning characteristics such as tagging, collaborating, and online sharing and viewing. I think this is the wave of the future for our students that are growing up as digital natives. Check it out!

Wishing Wall (Wall O' Stickies)

Wishing Wall

Here is a cool website for posting sticky messages that can be added by many. Here is the website. Check it out!

Spelling City

Spelling City

This site is the coolest site and kids will love it. You could use this for practicing vocabulary words in SFA. Just type in the words and spell city lets you teach the word spelling as well as providing a sentence to go with it. There are three modes: Test Me, Teach Me, or Play a Game.

There is also a printable parent letter to send home. You could have this site on your projector for learning together as a class. When you click on "Play a Game" a list of all kinds of games to practice the word are shown. Particularly fun is the Hangmouse game. Check it out!

Avatar Editor

Avatar Editor

This link will let your students create their own avatar to use for all kinds of things. Students actually create an avatar to their specifications such as size, eye color, hair style, etc... Think of the possibilities! Students can use this to stimulate writing activities such as an "all about me" or have them create a wild looking character and tell a story about it. They can then copy paste their avatar into their story. I would love to hear some suggestions from you about how students could use this avatar creator to spark creativity and engagement in a lesson. Students that have a Wii video game player will be familiar with these characters called Mii's. Feel free to go to this website and create one of your own. I named my avatar Media Mii. Have fun!!!

Interactive fruit_machine

Random Name/Word Picker

Here is a cool site to use when you are choosing students randomly like for Random Reporter in Success For All! Kids will love this!You can have their names typed in advance and just choose fruit picker and it will randomly choose a name for you. Have it up on your LCD projector. Let a student come up and click on it. Students will be immediately engaged! Click below for the full screen version. Have fun!

Click here for full screen version

FETC 2010

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Florida Educational Technology Conference again this year through the help of Marsha Cruce from Media Services for the Putnam County Webmasters. I will share some of the cool websites and information I gathered at the conference that might help you in the classroom. I also found some free trials of software I think you might be interested in previewing. Please post comments or suggestions to myself or other faculty members if you think of a good way some of these resources might be used. You are also welcome to add resources that you have found useful in your classroom. If you would like help setting up a blog of your own feel free to contact me to help you get started. I definitely don't have all the answers but together we can probably figure it out. After all, isn't that what learning through collaboration is all about? Let's get started!