Thing 12: I attended a “21st Century” Conference (in my PJ’s)

I attended two online conferences.  The first was “Learn to Blog:  Blog to Learn” by Anne Davis. The presentation was a short introduction to Blogmeister.  By clicking her links, I found a web quest to aid teachers in introducing blogs.  I thought this was a neat idea!  I visited some class blogs to get an idea of what other teachers and students are doing.  There is a lot more to explore, so I plan to visit her site again in the future and peruse the different links.             

I also attended on online conference session entitled “Using Web 2.0 Tools in a Grade One Classroom” by Kathy Cassidy.  She is a first grade teacher from Canada.  I was impressed by all of the Web 2.0 tools she has integrated into her classroom.  Her students have “Blog Buddies” in New Zealand, and their partnership has encouraged her students to research New Zealand.  It is so exciting to see children take ownership of their learning and seek out information in that way.  She also mentioned that she uses her blog to communicate with parents.  I plan to expand my blog next year to include a section for parents to ask questions, blog, and communicate.  I like the fact that she mentioned that parents who travel frequently are able to maintain a connection to the classroom.  I have found that this is an amazing benefit of our classroom blog.  The children feel that their parents are involved in their learning, and the parents feel connected to our classroom, even when they are far away.  Kathy also shared her experiences with wikis in the classroom.  She admitted that some wikis take off and others fizzle out.  She mentioned that she had to create several wikis and place students in teams to work on them because only one person at a time may work on the wiki.  I wonder if this is still the case, as this conference is several years old.  It seems that Kathy has had the same experience with web 2.0 tools that I have:  the children are so motivated to learn and share their ideas.  Isn’t this what it’s all about?