Jan 21 2007
Florida Educational Technology Conference
This Wednesday, January 24th, I’m heading to FETC – Florida Educational Technology Conference – held in Orlando. I have gone to this conference for the past 4 years (I think this is year #5). I also went 8 years ago.
I love this conference! Every year I get some great ideas to use in my classroom – software and best practices. One year I won a copy of Office 2003 and last year I won a copy of OneNote. This year I really want to win a new ipod 
There are two software programs that I found last year that I still use in my classroom, and will continue to use. EdClass is a program with lessons that integrate core curriculum with Office products. It is only for Windows (maybe they have a Mac version that I am not aware of) and offers options for Win98, 2000 and XP. You can also choose your Office version from 2000, XP or 2003. I bought this for use as my computer curriculum, but my media specialist thought it would be great for everyone. There are plenty of activities to go around. I did a (poorly attended) training and then no one ever used the program.
The other program that I found last year is my favorite! NetSupportSchool is a program that allows me to monitor the computers in my classroom. It not only lets me *spy* on the students’ computers, but it also lets me take control of their computers in order to help. It also lets me broadcast lessons and videos from my computer to all of theirs. I can even log on, log off, shutdown and reboot the computers from my workstation. There is so much that this program does and I haven’t even learned it all. We bought this program for my computer lab, and two other rooms. The research teacher has a mini-lab of 13 computers and the media center has a full lab of 25 computers. For some reason we never installed the program in those rooms. That reminds me to check on that next week. We should do it in the media center at least. We didn’t have a permanent research teacher at the beginning of the year, and then when we did hire one, I didn’t want to overwhelm her with added technology.
I am looking forward to finding new ideas at this year’s FETC. Is anyone else out there who reads my blog going?
