#EdCampBham

Cybraryman websites - what a fun presenter! He really loves education and loves sharing!

Session 1 - Room 229 Jennifer Barnett - book published at Amazon and B&N

Youtube video

• "teacherpreneurs" BE ONE!
• creating a dynamic and flexible learning environment
• transforming public education through digital technologies
• re-imagining teaching as a well-compensated career - What if organizations like United Way or Big Brothers/Big Sisters helped compensate???
• "Fine line between those who teach in schools and those who lead them."

www.teaching2030.org Link to blog from here.

What do we want to see in 19 year?

• Best person teaching kids where they are (geographically) - no matter where YOU are
• more than 1 adult in the room - more one-on-one, sharing strategies, collaboration/professional growth
• Teachers having a voice in legislation - they need info. from the classroom to base decisions on, must balance their concern for student safety - address their security online
• No more pigeon holes
• Who does the responsibility of solving school problems belong to? US!
• Teacher led school????
• Daily transparency in our classroom - if we all do it on a daily basis, it become the norm and others are expected to follow suit.
• Teachers need to be marketers! Who is the marketing expert at your school? What can they teach your faculty about getting the word out?
• Every school has so much untapped potential that can solve the real problems.
• Educate parents at the beginning and keep them updated - then they aren't afraid to speak up for their own child.
• SHOW each other what we are doing - convince principals to have a SMACK DOWN session :)
• What is hindering us? We know what to do correctly, but what's in the way?
• Check out Sir Ken Robinson!!! TED talks, etc.

Session 2 - Room 317 - Student Presentation Tools

• Interactive Noteboook - first day project, create a Glogster to introduce yourself and print it out
• WEB 2.0 - Somebody has created a tool online to use for free!
• PREZI has a meeting button now.
• Xtranormal ...seeing things on the edu site that wouldn't be good for my babies though!
• Virtual Field Trips for research
• Presentation Tools: Mix book, photostory, Wix, storybird, zooburst, tikatok, Our Story, ZFlip
• A project is just the result, not the lesson. What are they DOING??? NOT what are they making???
• edmodo

Smackdown!!!

Session 3 - Today's Classroom - Amanda Stone, Dana Joyner, Mandee McDonald

Global access, connecting, collaborating, creating, and LEARNING THEIR WAY!

What defines a classroom of today?

• mutual respect
• flexibility
• student-driven
• risk taking

Inquiry Based Learning - now What we know, but HOW we come to know...replace lesson plans with facilitated learning plans

• natural progression of differentiated instruction
• questions
• thinking
• facilitating
• ownership

Technology: Not about the tool, must inhance curriculum, technology has become default for "effort", IS about connecting, collaborating, social networking, PAPERLESS

Student Centered:

• Their needs?
• Design their own assessment and assess each other
• Where are they going?
• They tell you what they know and need to know
• They can be experts too - they teach us

Collaboration site - Lisa Parisi in New York

TWEETS from other sessions:

Let kids create videos what school Means to you #edcampbham @ideaguy42Reshape the image of school for the public.

Can you describe what your (school, classroom, yourself) in 140 characters?

Let's put our kids outside to do science! Expose them 2 the world, tear down walls so meaningful experiences can take place!#Edcampbham

Yesterday

Was one of the best days of my school year! We had a great day and I can't pin-point just one thing that made it better than all the others. We started the morning with digging in our terrarium. It wasn't even planned that way. I was trying to replant the seedling when the kids started entering the room. They were all so interested, so I just let them gather around the table. We just kept digging and exploring and talking and thinking. It was great learning! The kids got settled into their morning work while I worked with my intervention group. With our new classroom arrangement, we had plenty of space to work on the floor. I looked up about 15 minutes into intervention and saw my students using the new spaces in our room the way they were meant to be used ON THEIR OWN! They've already taken ownership and responsibility of their learning environment. I was so proud! The rest of our lessons went better than I expected! Nobody tattled at lunch! There were no tears when it was time to choose a reading spot...they helped each other all day!!! When recess time came, I played frisbee with them. I'm sure I looked like a nut trying to play frisbee in 83 degree heat, but we had a great time! At the end of the day, a student gave me a book she had made for me. It started out: "Dear Mrs. McD. I love you!" But, here is the kicker...the best sentence a child could write to me... "I know you love me too" GREAT! DAY!!!!

My FREE apps

I just got my first iTouches for my classroom. I spent several hours this afternoon going through FREE apps and loading them on the iTouches. There may actually be some "type A" in me after all. I had to be sure all of the folders were the same on each iTouch. They look great!

Here's what I got...

Camwow

Talking Tom

Talking Ladybug (not sure I love her)

Talking Dodo Bird

Dragon Dictation

Start Spanish Lite

Dictionary

Catchamouse

Angry Birds Rio

Gravity Lite

Pickin' Stix

Hop

Simon Cars

Google Earth

Origami III

Dem Bones

Cartoon Garden

Tap Zoo

This Day in History

Brainpop

NASA

Hubble Site

Sky View

National Museum of American History Cosmic

National Museum of American History Dinosaurs

Stack the States Lite

Touchy Books

Story Maker (Frustrated with this one so far...may delete)

Timed Reading

Whirly Word

Words With Friends

Same Sound

Alphabetic

ABC Phonics

Scrabble

Scrabble Blast

Grade 1 Words

Qrafter

AT&T Scanner

My Math App

ArithmeTick

Kids Math Fun

Rocket Math

Math Blaster

Kids Math

Lets Tans

Brain Game

Coins

Obviously, I couldn't find links for all of them, but you can search the iTunes Store from your iPhone, iPad, or iTouch and find them. I'll add to the list as I come across more. I hope my kids have some ideas for what we need as well.

QR Code Tour

Last week I was working with my former team mates as they decided how to arrange their rooms to create more learning spaces. I was starting to get a little jealous as they were doing things I could notimagine attempting with first graders.

I decided to see what my students thought. After all, it's their classroom too! I told the kids

that we were going to rearrange the room and I needed their help. I asked

them to think of spaces where we already do our best learning and to think of spaces we need to do even better learning. I will admit that I was expecting answers like, "We need more time to play games on the computer" or "We need ____ because it would be fun." I regret having low expectations.

Here are some of the things the kids said:

"We need to keep our library because we do a lot of learning in there."

"We need more space in our library so we don't distract each other."

"All of our books should be in our library. We forget about the science and math books and we can learn a lot from non-fiction." (Those were housed in the opposite corner of the room)

"We need a bigger area for our group time. We don't have room to work when we are all on the floor together."

"We all need to be able to get to the teacher equally."

WOW! I couldn't believe how much thought they put into what they were saying. Nobody said they wanted anything just for the fun of it.

They mentioned technology.

They mentioned small group work.

They mentioned independent work.

We started moving things around on Friday. I spent most of the weekend finishing what

couldn't be done with 17 7 year olds and had it ready for them on Monday morning. I expected Monday to be CRAZY! They came in quite excited, but immediately began using the space as

they had planned. It is truly THEIR room now. It was fabulous!

Today we made a QR code tour of our room. I used Audacity to record each student explaining part of our room. I exported each recording as an mp3. I used www.upload-mp3.com to upload each recording as a url. I then attached each URL to a QR code using www.qrstuff.com.

Here are a few of the codes...

This is the entrance to our room and our first code of the tour. Use any QR code reader you've got to experience part of the tour!