On Wednesday, I’m heading to FETC. I have been to FETC 4 of 5 times in the past 7 or 8 years. I love this conference; every year I find something new to use in my classroom. Sometimes it’s just a great idea and sometimes it’s something that costs money. I’m lucky that I have an administration who believes in technology and usually these things I find are purchased for me. In the past few years I have received a Mimio for my whiteboard and software to monitor all the computers in my classroom.

For the past few years I have toyed with the idea of being a presenter at FETC, but I never know what to present. It seems that the things that I know how to do are ‘old news’ by the next year. However, looking at this year’s offerings, maybe not. They may be old news to me, but there are so many teachers out there who are just learning about some of things that I have been doing in my classroom for years. One of the things that I like best about FETC is hearing how other teachers use technology, and one of the things that I like about teaching is hearing how other teachers teach the same skills and concepts that I teach. Hearing a new perspective is refreshing and makes my job more interesting.

While in the shower (don’t all great ideas come to us in the shower? ) I thought of a way to combine both of those collaborative ideas. At my school we have bi-weekly in house training sessions with the curriculum specialist. We have tried to make these trainings into a best practices sharing activity, with the principal’s blessing, but they are still more teaching than sharing. What I would like to do is to set up a wiki or blog page for teachers to share best practices and possibly infuse some training into the process.

If it was a blog, teachers could post what they did, or are planning to do, in their classroom, and other teachers could post comments on ways they have done that same thing, or give advice on how to improve on the lesson. If someone did a lesson that went really well, they could post that so that other teachers could try it too. I’d also love to see teachers giving advice on how to adapt lessons for other subject areas. Just this weekend I was talking to a math teacher who was saying that the short, full staff training we had last week that used a reading passage wasn’t helpful to her. I pointed out that the training wasn’t about the reading passage, but about the process and then proceeded to tell her that it was a process she used when teaching math (Modeled instruction, guided instruction and independent practice). She totally did not see that until I pointed it out!

If it was a wiki, then teachers could add to the posted lessons, but I’m almost afraid they would change someone’s lesson too much, and we’d lose the process of helping someone, or sharing best practices. If one person liked the original lesson, but then someone else changed it, the original lesson would not be there any more.

I would then like to present the process and outcomes at FETC 2009. I would get teacher responses to the process, either on video, in the form of quotes or even as a panel to present with me.

This is obviously in the very early stages of planning and I have a lot of thinking to do, but I’m kind of excited about it already. I need to think it out more (though posting here helps me do that – and already has [blog vs. wiki]) and present it to my principal. I could pilot it at the end of this year (after state testing) and then continue it at the beginning of next year. Piloting it this year would let me know if it would work and give me data and samples for the FETC proposal which is usually due sometime in July.

If there is anyone out there still reading this blog, I would LOVE to hear ideas and input.

Yup – I got an ipod Touch today! it’s soooo freakin cool! I still have my video ipod and I’m going to keep that for a while since it’s 30GB and the touch is only 16. I have a ton of audiobooks, so I kept those in the video ipod (along with everything else) and put music and videos on the touch. The coolest thing about the touch is the wi-fi access! I have a wireless network in my house, so I’ve been playing with that. It’s going to be really cool to not have to pull out the laptop, or lug it around in places with free wi-fi. I’m especially looking forward to using it at FETC in January. Maybe I’ll even do some live blogging. The keyboard is a bit sensitive, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

To keep this post somewhat education oriented, I’ll talk about another new toy I’ve been using – Classblogmeister . It’s a great tool to keep kids safe online while allowing them to blog. I used Learnerblogs for the past few years, but all of a sudden last year I couldn’t access them at school. They weren’t being blocked, but the IT guys could not figure out why the pages wouldn’t load. Learnerblogs was cool because of all the different templates, but in order to have security for the kids I had to set up individual accounts for each student using the gmail+name system. That was time consuming. With Classblogmeister I copy and pasted names from my class roster into their system and had classes set up quickly. Classblogmiester doesn’t have many templates to choose from, but my students will live I have been having some issues with Classblogmeister, but I’m forging ahead with it and I’m going to introduce it to my students tomorrow. I just hope that I can actually access it at school……..

I have wanted a Mimio Interactive Whiteboard for years – the price is right and my Media Specialist, who was with me this year, has agreed to purchase one for me I showed it to the math teacher who was with us and he wants one too – I’ll share mine with him for the rest of this year and we’ll try to get him one next year.

I also got some good info on making Digital Stories better. Just some small tips to take them up a level. I did some workshops on podcasting, which is something that I want to do, but haven’t felt that I have enough knowledge to do. Too bad we don’t have Macs because Garageband is the coolest thing! I will do podcasts with audacity and other tools.

Did you know that headphones use the same technology as microphones? If you plug headphones into the microphone jack you can use them as a microphone! My students are doing that to narrate their digital stories. The quality is not as good as if you used a microphone, but until I figure out how often I’ll podcast, I’m starting out with headphones (Note: I didn’t learn this at FETC – I learned it from my friend’s 14 year old son)

I didn’t win an ipod as a matter of fact I didn’t win anything. But I have decided that I NEED a video ipod, so I’ll be buying one next weekend

I have a ton of stuff to go through and new websites to visit – I’ll post any other good stuff as I find it.

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?