NCTIES - Teach21: Building Capacity

Mrs. McMillan and I are back at Bolton after soaking up all kinds of ideas and information at the NCTIES conference. I have never experienced a conference quite the same as I did this year's NCTIES conference. As we attended sessions we kept notes, updated Delicious accounts with new resources, and participated in what David Warlick likes to call the subterreanean conversation.
Connected with my newly added Tweetdeck and using the conference backchannels I participated in the connected conversations of others attending. So - instead of the communication being a presenter to audience/1 to 1 conversation there was the presenter to audience and audience to audience interactions/reactions as the presentations were happening. That made it a much deeper learing experience for me - being able to share ideas and respond to what educators from all over the state were thinking, asking, and sharing in real time. There was a clicking of laptop keys throughout these sessions, but somehow they weren't a distraction. It was just passionate educators sharing ideas in a connected world.
Being able to have these conversations with national technology leaders such as Vicki Davis, Meg Ormiston, Kathy Shrock, David Warlick and Will Richardson was very beneficial, but not nearly as beneficial as having them with colleagues simultaneously.
Our own presentation, Teach21: Building Capacity went well. David Warlick even slipped in the back to hear our story, which meant a lot. Later - in passing on our way to a session he simply looked at us and said, "Good Show." He had blogged that what he wanted from the NCTIES conference was stories and HE HEARD OURS!
Although we collected many ideas to bring back to Bolton more than anything, after hearing what is happening around our state and being able to talk with fellow educators, we are convinced we are on the right path, and doing things the right way. We have never lost sight that it's not about the technology, but what we do with it. This is the reflections video we shared in our presentations - and it's very powerful because it signals shift happening at Bolton Elementary.

Personal Learnng Networks at NCTIES

Mrs. McMillan and I have arrived in Raleigh and have been working for over 4 hours on learning how to develop our personal and professional learning networks using applications/web 2.0 tools like Twitter, blogs (imagine that), wikis and the sort. By the end of the day we'll have spent over six hours developing our own networks, learing of new tools to use and can share that with our faculty and staff. It's great to know we have started that as a team with Teach21 and can now take that to the next level where they'll be truly powerful tools for information and collaboration. We'll learn all we can and post notes to our wiki.

Teach21 at NCTIES

Teach21 Bolton will tell its story at next week's annual North Carolina Technology in Education Society Conference in Raleigh, NC. The presentation is entitled Teach21: Building Capacity. It will highlight the process, the teachers, the students, and the technology that has started to transform our classrooms into 21st Century learning spaces and change the way we are teaching. It's a story worth telling and hearing!

It's Contagious

It's Contagious

Seeing students create with technology is exciting! When other colleagues see its power and begin to explore using it in different ways then we know our initiative is working. Mrs. Patten, who is not a member of the initial Teach21 team, has gotten on board and tried something new using a product called voicethread. Mrs. Patten is a small group resource teacher who wanted a new way to get students excited about reading so she chose some plays, assigned students their roles, and used a digital camera and voicethread to put a new twist on readers theater. Her fifth grade students posed for pictures to illustrate the play with everything down to props and costumes, and then narrated the play by posting audio comments.
It was something new, and something she wasn't totally comfortable with, but Mrs. Patten took "the leap." The product is pretty impressive, and you can view the play about Franklin Roosevelt by clicking on the play button above this post.