My first blogpost!

It's been a week since I returned from the NCCE conference in Portland. I have to say it was both inspiring and depressing.

Inspiring: there were so many good sessions to attend. Unfortunately, all the ones I wanted to see were all scheduled at the same time....

I did get to Tammy Worcester's sessions on Technology Tips and Tricks, which inspired me to figure out some way to use PowerPoint in my classroom. I've decided to put the vocab words for my Reading stories on Ppt, and use them to review with my class. Not only do I get the "wow" factor, but the kids get some needed review while learning a new tech skill (you assign a "cat" to be in charge of the "mouse"...)

Annette Lamb's session on WebQuests was amazing--I could have listened to her for the whole conference. The best tip: do a Google search on the subject you want to webquest to see if there's already something you can use...And who knew that if you do a search at books.google.com you can find preview chapters of books--what a great way to get kids hooked on reading!

Sally Bankson was another inspiring presenter--showing how she used her interactive whiteboard with her kindergartners. My take-away from this: I need to be modeling technology use in context for my first graders--and the best part is--they don't know they can't do it, so they are fearless!

I missed the session on Digial Storytelling--but many of the presenters promised their session notes would be up on their website, so I'm hoping a Google search will help me figure this out...or, there's always next year!

The depressing part was--I left feeling very behind the times. It seems as if our district is playing catch-up in the area of technology. Interactive whiteboards, teacher laptops, regular computer lab time, blogs, wikis, digital storytelling....there's a brave new world of education out there, and I feel that I'm doing my students a disservice because I don't have the training, time, or technology to help them navigate it. Many of our students will never learn the skills they need to be successful in the Web 2.0 (or 3.0 or 15.0...) if we don't teach them. I really hope that as the technology bond funds start coming in, that we make wise decisions and give teachers the tools and training they need to ready our students for the future.