So, we are back from FETC and, “our minds’ are a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought, cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives***.” Our imaginations are a blaze, and our feet are still barking.
On a more serious note FETC was an amazing, dare I say awesome, conference. The people were friendly, the presenters were good, the vendor hall was GINORMOUS, and the weather . . . well the weather left a little to be desired but 3 our of 4 ain’t bad.
We will be posting many new and useful links to the LINKS section of the ERC. In fact we picked up so many cool new sites we are creating a new list category called FETC 09.
Cool things we saw at FETC: Well SMART was there and commanded quite an audience. The SMART Table seemed like a huge hit. Just in case you missed it SMART has a new collaborative multitouch table that is a lot of fun. We have one as a matter of fact and if you would like to schedule a visit feel free to contact our sales department. SMART also announced their new Classroom Suite software. The package includes Notebook 10 (NBX), SMART Sync (formally SychronEyes), the Student edition, and some great new admin tools.
We also attended many amazing presentations. There were many that we enjoyed but two come to mind right now. Both were based on the use of new Web 2.0 apps to create student centered projects. As we mentioned we will be adding all of these resources to the Links section of the ERC but here are a few just to wet your appetite.
CK12 FlexBooks: Making good choices, reading smart, and saving and organizing their knowledge is key to being good producers. Textbooks will be created and recreated by those who use them. What do they need to help them do this?
ArtPad: Have your students create their own personal masterpiece. Or have them create a graph, concept map, etc. and then watch how it was created. What a great memory aid.
Crappy Graphs: Because “Awesome graphs” sounded way too pretentious! This tool allows you to create your own ‘crappy’ graphs very quickly without have to go through all the trouble of creating them in excel. Great for showing a concept quickly and in a fun way. Even better, once you have created your masterpiece you can submit it to the website for everyone to see.
Here’s a fun example we created earlier:
Stay tuned for further updates!
*** source = Hedy Lamarr (It’s HEDLEY!)
At the science presentation today, CrappyGraphs got a huge positive response. The ease of creating graphs combined with student creativity makes for some great submissions. I particularly like “Happiness Throughout the Week”. Quite funny!
Crappy Graphs is totally great. A very simple and fast way for students to create their own graphs. I like that you can look at other people’s graphs as well. One that I found to be really interesting can be found in the “All User Graphs” page and is titled “Matt’s Weekend Graph.” It’s so cute