FETC

This past week I attended the Florida Educational Technology Conference, FETC. This was the first time I attended this conference and I have to say it was a great experience. As you can see in the photo above, it was hosted at a huge beautiful convention centre. The palm trees and the 30+ temperatures were an added bonus!

Some of the sessions I attended were better than others. I really enjoyed the sessions that provided me with teaching resources (i.e. websites and apps) that I could use with my students. I did enjoy the first session I attended, iPads for Teaching and Learning: A Panel Discussion. My initial thoughts were, boy aren't we behind in the world of technology; however, I still enjoyed hearing their thoughts. The discussion was led by two principals, including two teachers and two students. They were reflecting on their experiences using iPads with a 1:1 student : iPad ratio in the classroom. What a dream! Some  of the things that stood out to me from this session were when the teachers said that assignment completion rates jumped to 100%. Students could no longer use the excuse that they lost their homework or couldn't find it. Everything was on the iPad and their work was all received and submitted electronically.

One other session that I enjoyed was Engaging the Reluctant Reader. Within this session we were provided with an overload of websites, apps to support student learning. Some of these resources I am familiar with and others I have yet to try. Here's the list:
-Sound Literacy
-Reading Trainer
-Dropbox
-Evernote
-Overdrive
-Tumblebooks
-LibriVox
-BookShare
-Read2go
-Digital Story time
-Wikipedia
-Brain pop
-Dragon Dictation
-Mind Mapping
-Popplet
-iWordQ
-Ginger spell checker
-Grammerly.com
-Quizlet
-Evernote peek
-Bibme
-Spark notes
-Glogster
-Aurasma
-Zaped
-Weebly
-Thinglink
-Story Arc
-Story Creator
-My Story
-Sock Puppets
-iBooks Author
-Voice Thread
-Voki
-Animoto

After the sessions, Maureen and I ventured to the vendors where we were overwhelmed with the amount of amazing technology in one huge room. Upon entering the room I snapped this photo with Barb's saying in mind, "Google it."

While in the vendors area, we attended a google session. The presentation can be seen by clicking here. We also attended a mimio session, which I really enjoyed. It as very interactive and I can see it being something that my students would really enjoy. It was beneficial for me to get to participate in this session because our school purchased two mimio teach devices two years ago and they have sat in a cupboard ever since. Our vice principal at the time purchased them and then moved to a new school. Since returning to school, I have dug up the mimio teach and had our tech guy in to install the software on my computer. It's now working,  I just have to figure out how to access the interactive mimio lessons so I can reach out to the students in my class.