Teacher+Notes

ONCE AGAIN I attended the MACUL conference at COBO Arena for 2011. It was a fantastic learning experience. More to come!

Hello, Everyone. I just attended the MACUL conference at COBO Arena on Friday, March 20, 2009 and received some great information regarding teaching. I'd like to share a few things with you here.

First of all, being a very visual learner myself, those were the sessions I seemed to seek out having only one day to take advantage of the conference. I would have liked to have been able to attend the whole conference to get a better overall sense of where technology is going but couldn't this year. Perhaps next year.

The first session I attended was interesting. It was geared for teachers with students with special needs (which pretty much includes us all) so could apply to any classroom. Her focus was computer animation. Clay-mation was her forte but she also included action figures, hand drawn figures, and clip art. My goal was to see how I could bring lessons to life but if you have the technology this is a great too for students to share their understanding of a particular subject study as well. The software she used is called FRAMES 4 which I understand Retta has. (I get first dibs!) :) It can be purchased from "Tech for Learning" which also carries other types of software. (You should be able to easily Google it.)

The software works in a similar fashion to regular cartoon animation where you make a series of slides that has slight changes of whatever figure you are trying to animate. The animation occurs when all of the slides are put together and rapidly sequenced through. Much like you would do in a hand-made booklet where you quickly shuffle through the pages to create the animation. I liked the program which seemed pretty user friendly and could also be coupled with audio. Looked like fun!

**The second session seemed to relate well to my philosophy of teaching as well as music.** It was called "You Fill Up My Senses" with yes, none other than John Denver, my hero, on video. This was presented by Dr. Lynell Burmark. There was a great handout which I will copy for you to use as you would like. Being a music teacher, I think sometimes that even though technology is an awesome tool I'm afraid we may lose the human side of things. Music is one of the most uniquely "human" forms of expression there is. Keeping in touch with the senses helps us to hang on to our humanness, if you will. This session talked about using technology to enhance our teaching and lessons but to also tap into our students' senses....touch, smell, taste, sound, and sight. She included some great websites and video examples that can be used to drive a point home. For example, a picture she showed was a cow with a picture of the world on her side....to learn the world map...okay... a little out there...but memorable which also produces a good chuckle. Students had also produced movies to show feelings or understanding of a concept. This also hits home for me since a program like this was offered to my son who was somewhat ADD. It saved him (he is very "hands-on" and he went on to be a fantastic high school student which I think may not have happened had it not been for the program they called IMAST at the time.  This is truly the implementation of differentiation in teaching.

She went on to point out there are other senses besides are main five that can be tapped into such as, sense of humor, "The 6th Sense" (intuition), sense of purpose, sense of meaning and (insights).

I purchased her DVD and CD and will give a review once I watch it. I'm hoping it will be a good resource of ideas.

I went on to visit the exhibits since they closed early. I was able to see FRAMES 4 in action and also learned about netbooks. I ended up purchasing one at COSTCO over the weekend. If you'd like to see it, please stop by. I bought it mainly as a tool to be more mobile for assessing etc. I had looked for a PALM and hey are obsolete since our phones do so many things now. But, for me, the phone is a bit too small....so... you get the picture. :)

The last session before the end keynote speaker was a great session as well. This was presented by Steve Dembo. So as to not make this soooooo long, I will list the 10 best free websites that he found helpful to educators. Here goes: MACULSPACE.NING.COM (forms from Steve Dembo) **WEBSITES-** **BLOGLINES** checkout COOL CAT TEACHER **DELICIOUS.COM** social bookmarking **CRAPPYGRAPHS.COM** very simple graph making/Venn diagrams **XTRANORMAL** storytelling site **LET ME GOOGLE THAT FOR YOU** people have done searching for you **POLLEVERYWHERE** **JAYCUT like IMOVIE** - video editor-need SNAG IT or FANTASIA (not sure about those) **MOGULUS** - a TV studio **EDMODO** - kind of like TWITTER for students TWITTER not good for students - good for teachers **PREZ1** or **PREZL** (couldn't read my writing) A different way to present -like POWERPOINT without slides.

The last presenter was awesome too. It really brought it all home about how fast our technological world is changing. It really showed me how much I don't know too! WHEW! It was a great day! If you have any questions....ask Retta and Lisa. HA! No seriously, if you have any questions for me please ask away and I'll do my best to give you any info. I have. Tah, Lori