Call for Proposals for Great Free, Online Conference

The FREE 4T Virtual Education Technology Conference will run from May 18th-May 21st.  There will be 45 workshops and breakout sessions on all aspects of technology in education.  This is a great conference hosted by University of Michigan School of Education graduate students. When they wanted to learn more about educational technology in their coursework, they put out the call to teachers world wide. The result is this excellent, free, online conference!

Last year I had the opportunity to present at the 4T Virtual Education Technology Conference on two topics: Digital Writing and Global Classrooms. It was a great experience with attendees from across the United States and around the world. It was also a great opportunity for teachers I work with to share the amazing things they are doing. We had fun doing panel presentations with each teacher taking about 10 minutes to share their lesson ideas and resources. This was a great introduction to online presentations for teachers. 

 

The 2013 4T Virtual Conference's Call For Presentation Proposals is now OPEN!  Consider presenting! The organizers were very helpful if the technology is new to you. Here is the link to make a proposal: https://sites.google.com/site/conference20122/to-dos  And follow them on Twitter or use this hashtag #4t2013

And if presenting isn't your thing, certainly register. The conference is free and they are providing free CEUs to participants. Register here:  https://sites.google.com/site/conference20122/project-definition I always learn the most from other teachers sharing what they are doing and a conference called "Teachers Teaching Teachers about Technology" is all about just that!

Website of the Week #1

Hoping to make this a new habit. There are so many great websites out there that I often forget what some of the great ones are! I am hoping that by posting just one a week (I'm also email blasting my teachers these) I will be able to share some great resources, remind folks of great resources, and have a nice catalog of some of my favorite sites when I want to put together a presentation or just make a recommendation to a colleague. And my hidden agenda is that maybe this will get me posting to my blog more often. :) So here is the inaugural....

Website of the Week #1

http://www.sweetsearch.com/

Tired of students going to Google for all their research? Try SweetSearch: http://www.sweetsearch.com/

Sweet Search uses only the 35,000 Websites that their staff of researchers, librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved. This helps students find good information faster. Consider recommending this site to students for all their research!

Have you had good luck using Sweet Search? What do students think? Would love to hear your stories!

4tVirtual Con Adventures with Digital Reading/Writing Workshop

In addition to collaborating and presenting on The Global Classroom Project (Teachers Teaching Teachers About Global Projects) I was lucky enough to pull together four amazing Language Arts/English teachers to share their experiments and adventures with Digital Reading/Writing Workshop at the 4tVirtualCon. If you've read some of my other posts: Dude, Can You Please Edit and We Have Authentic Voices, you know that one of my passions is using digital tools to give students authentic opportunities to write and to reflect on what they've read. These four teachers are doing it and shared their ideas in this presentation.


I wanted to use this post to share their amazing work. They were all generous enough to also share some hand-outs they use and resources they found helpful. If you have additional resources or if you've blogged about similar topics, please comment here and add your own ideas, links or questions!


Here is a link to the slides from the presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/edtechdunny/dude-canyoupleaseeditss


Read more about "The Students Take Control: Virtual Literature Circles" here: http://elenagreertlpproject2012.weebly.com/index.html


Plus, read this article from Educational Leadership: http://www.educationalleadership-digital.com/educationalleadership/201009?pg=52&pm=2&u1=texterity#pg52 

Read and listen to middle and high school students publishing their work: http://authentic-voices.wikispaces.com/


Resources for trying out character blogs: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dyiohc9mix4u5or/MZOcLxZON_


Plus this great post from Read, Write, Think: http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/creating-character-blogs-1169.html 


Highly recommended reads:


The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks
Because Digital Writing Matters by National Writing Project, with Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and Troy Hicks


And, here is the link to our presentation:  https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2012-05-22.1458.M.86D4BB880224F640E9607ED9214AC7.vcr&sid=2009317