The ACTEM Conference

Jim's Best of the Web was an amazing session. He knew so much about finding great websites and found many during the session based on what teachers in the audience needed. I got so many good websites from the session.

1. Google Earth: it is not just for looking at the Earth but you can also turn around and look out into space. You can use this feature in a science unit for students.

2. http://phat.Colorado.edu/index.php is a great website to let second graders explore college level physics!! They learn through games on this site and there are many of them.

3. www.literactive.com is a great site that has book fro children to read with as much assistance as they need. By highlighting words the student can have them read to them or they can read it on there own. The images that go along with the story are very cute and interactive. This site can befit children in classrooms with varying levels of reading.

4. www.iknowthat.com has many types of informational packs for teachers and can be searched by grade level.

Jim also emphasized the idea of being creative. Creativity is the overall goal, and computers are just a tool to accomplish the goal. (I really liked that idea)

Lulu is an online publishing site people can use. I thought that was very cool. I have always wanted to try writing a children’s book and with lulu I can do it for free!

The Are you Ready to be a Teacher in the Twenty First Century was a very interesting session as well. I liked his comparison of a classroom and an operating room. He shows how over the years operating rooms have changed dramatically over the years. This is NOT true of classrooms. As years have gone by classrooms have not changed that much. I think that with smart boards the classroom is changing slowly but not enough.

In this session we also focused on technology as a tool of communication and learning with the three E’s.

· Expose

· Employ

· Express

The session also talked about students being able to claim ownership over the things they make and how that ownership is very import. If the students feel like they have ownership over their work they will care about what they are producing.

The one thing I did not like about the session was everyone was talking about one to one classrooms. I understood this to be the new program that many schools were using, giving lab tops. I also thought many schools were starting the program at an older age (in middle school). Many of the examples that were used in the session were one to ones in elementary classrooms. I was just wondering what different schools were doing with their one to one programs.