EDUC+8Y24+–+Sec5Showcase



Ashley LaFleur - Assistive Technologies Attending the Technology Showcase was a very valuable experience. I had not had the opportunity to attend a technology workshop in previous years or throughout teachers college so I was excited to be exposed to new technologies that I can use as support in the classroom. One workshop that I attended was technology for differentiated instruction. The focus of the workshop was special needs students and using programs such as co-writer and clicker 5 to help students progress in their learning. During the workshop we explored various programs. One of the key ideas that I took away from the workshop was that as a teacher it is important that you are meeting the needs of the individual student and working with the programming to do so. There are many ways you can change programs to meet the needs of your students. For example, in Co-Writer you can have the program scribe for the student. There are many activities that will allow students to work at their own level, even if it is just building simple skills where students learn that by clicking on a button, something will happen. These programs can assist with visual learners. There are pictures available on the program; however, other visual elements can be uploaded for a particular student or lesson. I also learned the importance of gradual release of responsibility. Students who are just starting to work with these programs will need guidance and modeling. Slowly students can take on more personal responsibility and begin to work independently with the program. This workshop was very valuable and exposed me to new technologies that I was unaware of.

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Andrea Cipolla- SMART Technology

I was particularly excited to attend the SMART Technology workshop! I have not had a lot of experience with this technology and was curious to know what it is in fact capable of. Many of the SMARTboard features were demonstrated during the workshop and we were given the opportunity to experiment with it as well. I was impressed by the assessment software capabilities where the teacher can elicit anonymous answers from students in order to obtain diagnostic, formative or summative feedback. In addition, the tool can easily be used as an interactive tool for students. One of the main things that I took away from the workshop is that it is important for teachers to ensure that technologies are used to assist the delivery of a lesson while tending to the multiple intelligences, but that it should never take the focus away from the lesson itself and it should never waste unnecessary time. I hope to some day have access to this type of technology in my teaching career and I look forward to truly experimenting with it and seeing how it fits with my teaching style.

I thought that the technological showcase was extremely informative as well as interesting. Technology is amongst us whether we like it or not, and as future teachers, it is imperative that we keep up with the times. As a result, we need to integrate technology into the classroom. Through this showcase I was able to learn about many exciting technology approaches I could use with my future students. I especially liked the first presentation that I attended as I was able to discover many useful resources. The guest speakers discussed some collaborative learning applications which I was unaware of. Some examples include: eTextbooks and mobile learning. I really liked the Elluminate Web Conference initiative. Through this project, students in Canada are able toconnect with children in developing countries around the world. Some of the projects that are involved are Machinto, My Hero, Art Miles and Rock Our World. The Rock Our World project connects classrooms using music, web conferences and video production. Students create music in garbage band which unfortunately is only affiliated with Macintosh computers. Will Smith even became involved in this project as he wanted students to then perform and produce a music video based on what they had created. We were fortunate to be able to watch the completed music video and it was absolutely amazing! I could not believe that students from all over the world could come together and create something so magnificent!!! Projects such as this one are great and I think that students would definitely love doing them. Due to this showcase, I now have many valuable ideas which I cannot wait to implement in the classroom. __
 * Emma Pierre - Global Learners Workshop

Kristy Dolson An Introduction to Comic Life and BitStrips for Schools Marilyn Legault demonstrated these two different comic creation tools and gave numerous examples of how to use each in the classroom to engage students. She explained that teachers use the tools to integrate the curriculum because students can create a comic using content from one subject area and use Language Arts skills and knowledge when producing the written work. Creating comics is much more engaging for students than pumping out a traditional essay and it is more likely to engage multiple intelligences and activate higher order thinking skills. I chose this presentation because I grew up reading comics and I have even dabbled in the world of WebComics, so I know how popular and exciting they can be for students. I am already looking forward to adapting this tool (especially Comic Life) in my teaching practice. Since History is my teachable these programs would integrate very nicely as students would have the opportunity to create comics regarding historical events or personas. There is a definite need for tools like these in the Junior/Intermediate grades because right now, History more often than not comes out of a textbook and students need to be engaged more. Yes students should read the textbook, and other historical resources, but they need to apply that research by creating products that are enjoyable to them and can be proudly displayed to their peers and family. I really wish this software had been available to me when I was a student.

Session 3: Welcome to the Inspiration® Suite: Curriculum Integration Workshop The session I decided to review is my third session about Inspiration, Inspire Data and Kidspiration. John, Nick and George demonstrated the effective use of Inspiration, Kidspiration and Inspire Data in the classroom. John and Nick discusses the effectiveness of using inspiration and kidspiration to help students organize the information they want. We get to experiment with the Kidspiration and Inspiration. For kidspiration, teacher can let student become engaged by letting student try to think of what materials ar recyclable and what is considered garbage. John shows us how teacher can let student move those images to the appropriate sections. Then John discusses that inspiration can be incorporated in the curriculum very flexibly. Furthermore, Nick tells us about Inspiration 8 International version will have lesson plan templates for teachers to plan lessons. We learned the variety of tools which is offered by Kidspiration and Inspiration such as the rapid fire and how to arrange the points in a neater fashion. John also shows us the ability for inspiration to arrange the mind map into an outline in just one click. Furthermore, the outline can also be exported into Microsoft word which is very convenient. Finally Geoge showed us how to use Inspire Data. Inspire Data is a very effective tool for manipulating data and also creating a poll online for students to answer. This is because Inspire data enables teachers to create questions for students to answer online. This enable to teacher to know what the student know or their interest are. Also Inspire Data allows the poll to be manipulated into a statistic for teacher to use or teach to students. Inspire Data also contain many sample data which the teacher can use to teach students. Inspire data after creating the data table can also allow the user to convert that data into visuals for students to understand. Inspire data is particular useful if teacher is manipulating huge data but students can not picture number as easily as visual representations which Inspire Data does a good job in converting the data into visual representations. If you want to see a particular result, all you have to do is change a word and the visual representation moves to show you the intended results. I selected this presentation because I want to know how to incorporate the use of inspiration, inspire data and kidspiration into a classroom environment more effectively. I always thought I will use inspiration in the classroom but I was not sure how I can use it. After this presentation I know how to incorporate it. I see inspiration easier to help me target visual learners better to understand the materials. I see this tool be used to represent the gardner's multiple intelligence.

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What a great showcase! I had so much fun and got to meet some great people who ran the show. I woudl like to thank Brock for putting something like this on. It was very informative, and made me see the importance of Technology in the classroom. I went to the Global Learners workshop first. It was an amazing one! I learned so much and found some great programs to use in the class to conncect with with rest of the world. I think it is very important to work alongside with other classrooms throughout the world. We can see how they learn and it is always fun meeting new freinds. Especially when they are from another country or city. Overall, I really enjoyed the showcase and got some useful tools. I also really enjoyed the Literacy using comics class. It was really neat and comics will be something children will always be interested in. I think using computers is going to get even more important in the classroom as I get older. I want to be able to use computeers and technology in the classroom and I want to be up to date on the new inventions or programs. Having workshops like these, help educators keep furthuring their knowledge! Thanks!

Rasha Saymeh - Occasional Teaching** Because I was not able to attend the Technology showcase at the Hamilton campus, I am going to write about the Building Futures PD Day that occured on January 22, 2010. One of the workshops that I attended was on Occasional Teaching and I found it to be pretty interesting for teacher candidates. The presentor talked about the process of becoming an occasional teacher, useful tools and strategies for first-time occasional teachers, and handy tips and tricks to try when you're stuck. I selected this presentation because I thought it would be very relevant to us right now, especially with the job market that we are going to be entering in the spring. My favorite part was when he told us about the 'tool kit' that he always carries around with him when he supply teaches, like a toothbrush, a pack of cards, and other small things that you would not normally think about that can come in handy.

Dave Leslie - Smartboard Technology

I thought the technological showcase was helpful in that the sessions displayed innovative technologies that could be useful in the classroom. I especially enjoyed learning about smartboards and document cameras. I had not heard of document cameras but to me it was a much more affordable alternative to a smartboard. Document cameras act in a similar way to an overhead projector except instead of light projecting the image the camera projects the image. The presenter showed many different engaging and interactive uses for the document camera. One use I particularly like is the ability for students to present their work in front of the class and actually take still frame pictures of their steps when solving a math problems. The technological showcase was a great way to become more aware of the uses for the various technological tools available to teachers.



Bev Clark - Session 1: Royal Botanical Gardens - Global Community and Videoconferencing I learned a lot from this session because I had minimal prior knowledge on videoconferencing. The presenter was incredibly helpful and very knowledgeable. The items and ideas that she presented to us were multi-school and class videoconferences, using videoconferencing to introduce a topic, using videoconferencing to meet with students all around the world, and using videoconferencing to connect science and social studies curriculum to real-world experiences. Videoconferencing is such an incredible tool and she made it seem very simple to use - simple if you have the technology that is. We were informed that the technology can cost up to $20, 000 for everything needed and that most boards in Ontario do not have the equipment, or have it available only on a loan basis from the board office. I gained a number of ideas (including incorporating french "videopals" because my teachable is french) however, I feel a little doubtful that the majority will transpire due to cost problems. This technology is becoming more and more present in the schools and will be used I am certain in the future so it is a good experience to become aware of it. I really enjoyed my sessions on SMART technology and ComicLife and Bitstrips as well. I found that I gained a lot of useful resources from those presentations that were more viable for me in my next block and teaching career in the next coming years. I would love to incorporate cideoconferencing into my curriculum delivery and I have gained a number of very useful resource links to do so, so hopefully I will be lucky enough to end up in a school that has access. (Also because the presenter was from Royal Botanical Gardens, she had a lot of great information on Outdoor Education using technology which I am very interested in.)

Marian Gulyas- Session 1: Global Community and Videoconferencing

This session was actually not the one that I originally thought it would be. I expected it to be more about creating global commections guiding students to learn about social justice issues. Although this was jot the case, this workshop was of great interest to me. I had never before thought about doing video conferencing in my classroom. I think this is such a valuable experience as often field trips are difficult to coordinate and having an expect physically come into the classroom is difficult. For this reason videoconferencing is a great option. I wish that more schools in southern ontario would have the equipment to accommodate for video conferencing. Despite this rstriction, I feel that web cams could be used and the conference, though not as clear quality, would still work. I am looking for ways to do this during my teaching block!

Madeleine Annett - Global Learners Workshop [|GEDC0109.JPG]

The techshowcase workshops gave me insightful and practical ideas that would work in any classroom. The purpose of the workhsps wre to give the students an opportunity to engage with teh lesson with the use of technology. My favourite workshop was Global Learners, where the presentor introduced us to her grade five classroom where she uses web-based programs that allowed her students to communicate, dialogue and learn with classrooms around the world. The students were working on a project and would discuss their research and ideas with students from Africa, United States through the use of technology. In addition, the presentor used an amplifier and microphone combination to engage use and demonstrated how it hooks the students in her classroom. The presentor turned off the microphone and I was experienced with my listening. I would, if possible try to have this technology in the classroom. The use of technology as a medium to teach is recommended, however it should also be a part of how students teach each other and present their learning globally.

Tech Showcase

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The first session I (Ashleah Genovy) attended was Getting Under Your Skin: Creative Projects across the Curriculum presented by Kelly Janzen. The session discussed the uses of Mac programs including GarageBand in order to create interesting media/music projects within the classroom. I have to say that I really enjoyed the session because as a new Mac owner I was able to use programs that I never used before. It was really interesting to see the awesome programs Macs include, but I am not sure how realistic it will be in the classroom because Macs aren’t readily accessible in most schools. Overall I thought the session was great and I have used GarageBand for several technology classes since!=====

Ashley Northcotte- Technology Showcase: GarageBand I attended the Getting Under Your Skin: Creative Projects across the Curriculum presented by Kelly Janzen. It was the first time I got to experience the program called GarageBand which allows you to compose your own music by adding different instruments and arrangements. I thought it was a a great program to get students engaged, interested in music and integrate technology in the classroom. It was so engaging that many of us were playing with the program once she set us loose on the computers! The only thing was that this program was presented and I believe ony available on Mac computers which are not located in most schools so it was unfortunate to find out about and use this new resource but be unable to bring it into our blocks for this term or our future classrooms. The session itself was interesting and engaging and I think the idea of bringing a program like garageband into the classroom for students is a great idea!

Jason Huth - Building Futures P.D. Day

I was not able to attend the Tech Showcase, but I attended the Aboriginal Education workshop on January 21st. The focus of this workshop was to communicate to us future teachers the inequalities and difficulties facing aboriginal students in the education system. The presenter, Yvonne Morrison, provided us with some helpful strategies of how to include aboriginal culture into our curriculum and a number of resources to consult/contact for more ideas. Perhaps the most lasting impression I got from the showcase was the knowledge that a student in your class may be of aboriginal background but you may not be aware of it. It is therefore important to teach about all cultures and be aware of negative biases and stereotypes that may exist in any resource you use in class. Due to the geographic isolation of many aboriginal peoples, technology could have a great impact in this area of education. While many teachers are not of aboriginal background and don't feel knowledgeable enough to teach it, they could use technology, like a webcam or podcast, to contact someone who is.