Technology Vision Conference November 15th Region 8 ESC

I had the priviledge of attending the 21st Century Technology Vision Conference for District Leaders at Region 8 ESC. I attended the keynote address presented by Kevin Honeycutt on "Trends, Tactics, and Tools for 21st Century Learning" and a two part session on iPads in Education. I have summarized what I learned for my readers.

Kevin Honeycutt provided many resources for educators during his address. He lists these resources on his website, http://www.kevinhoneycutt.org/ in his Learning Toolbox. Among the most interesting resources he listed, I want to point out Classroom20.com, which is a social networking site for educators similar to Facebook. The site is open only to those in education, and provides network opportunities, online events, media, discussion groups, and links to other resources. This is a great place for educators to practice using this Web 2.0 tool which can so enrich the lives of our students as well a for those experienced in social networking to develop a social network built entirely of educators.

Another resource pointed out by Kevin Honeycutt is http://www.lulu.com/, a self-publishing website which Kevin touts as a powerful resource to get students to write. Using this site, you can publish student writing or artwork into a book and sell individual copies without a large investment. Kevin suggests using the site to publish individual students who write their own poetry or stories and purchase an individual copy of the book for the student to encourage them. He also suggests using it to create a classroom or school anthology of student work where students compete for a spot in the book and the collection is offered to students, parents, and extended family of the participants. He also suggests using the site for the school to self-publish their own yearbook. Rather than purchasing yearbooks from a publishing house in advance of sales and risking profits on too many copies, http://www.lulu.com/ will allow the school to set the price of the yearbook and make all the profits, while parents and students place orders themselves from the website and only the books that are sold are printed. The website demonstrates many other uses which are great for education.

The iPads in Education seminar was eye-opening. These fantastic tools should be provided on a one-to-one ratio for every learner in the US. The number of practical uses for the device in education are astounding. There are literally hundreds of educational applications available, many of them free.

One particularly useful application would almost offset the cost of supplying the units to students by itself. This application, called eclicker, would replace expensive clicker systems which the school would have to purchase separately. While clickers are useful in the classroom, they can be used for only one purpose. With the free eclicker student application installed on student iPads and the $10 eclicker host application loaded on the teacher's iPad, the units work exactly like the expensive clicker systems, but provide both student and teacher with all the additional applications which they can benefit from on the iPad. Considering the expense of an independent clicker system, this nearly free application can help your school offset the cost of individual student iPad or iTouch devices.

More iPad resources are listed at the presenters' website at http://reimersresources.wikispaces.com/. Be sure to check them out along with Powerpoint slides of the presentation by clicking the link on the left entitled The iPad for Education.