Top 3 Takeways and Memories from ISTE 2014

For the past week, I've had visitors from Sunday to Sunday and now I finally have time to blog about my first experience at ISTE 2014 last weekend. ISTE was nothing short of invigorating. A couple weeks ago, I went to the whole brain teaching conference and was blown away and now I'm all WBT + Tech Tools = Sweet 1st Grade Classroom!

If any of you have ever been ISTE then you can attest to how massive and overwhelming it is! ISTE was here in Atlanta this year {super convenient for me}, and it took over the entire Georgia World Congress Center. From the hundreds of sessions, playgrounds, and the ginormous EXPO hall it was nearly impossible to see and do it all! I'm going to share my top 3 takeaways from ISTE in order to commemorate and recap my experience.

Tech Centers

My favorite session, and the one in which I feel I learned the most was actually my first one with Nancye Black. She led a session on technology centers and showed how to differentiate for primary and intermediate. The centers she discussed were movie making, blogging, digital storytelling, voice recording, desktop publishing and presentations. During the session, I thought of a ton of ways I could incorporate each session since we will have 4 computers, 1 android tablet and 2 iPods in the classroom! {whoop} Nancye also led another session I attended about writing which introduced me to storyjumper.com and my story maker! Exciting stuff people!

                                                                   
The poster sessions were also great! Each day they had different presenters with posters sharing their technology infused ideas, lessons and activities. Some of my favorite posters were using ipads with guided reading and flipping a kindergarten classroom. I was also able to have some quick conversations with both the teachers and received some really great advice. The networking I was able to do at ISTE was definitely a major takeaway as well. I even set up an opportunity to video conference with another first grade class this year! Awesome!

 The expo hall was surely memorable and where I had the most fun! Visiting the different exhibitors and seeing the technology they had to offer. My favorite exhibitor had to be Class Flow becaaaaauuuuseee I was able to watch in action with students from the Ron Clark Academy and Ron Clark himself! Loved it! {Posted a video on my Instagram}

Lots of goodies and freebiess, giveaways and raffles as well! I was a winner twice! I won a free subscription to science4us.com and a mobile hotspot. If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen this pics!

Overall, ISTE 2014 was one of the most exciting professional experiences I've ever had. It made me more excited about my passion for using technology and I look forward to ISTE 2015!

Here's a flipagram of my experience!

Tuning into Technology: Integrating Technology into Reading

I'm sooooo excited to be linking up with iTeach 1:1 and the Learning to the Core for the Tuning into Technology linky party! Technology is my thing!!! If I had to choose one area of teaching I get excited about and feel I possess a strength, it would definitely be technology. If you're a techie teacher or have a great tip to share link on up!

Today I will be discussing how I integrate technology into reading. Like many of the bloggers out there I also do Daily 5 with my students. My students and I use tons of websites and web 2.0 tools in order to facilitate a smooth Daily 5 block. The first website is the most important because it has multiple uses.

Symbaloo
Symbaloo is surely one of my top favorite tech finds. This websites eliminates the need to post every reading website I want my students to visit for listen to reading, read to self etc. What's so great about symbaloo is it is one large collection of websites for learning. I have links to reading websites such as storylineonline and wegivebooks, the visual thesaurus, word games, brain pop, and kid friendly search engines! My links are also color coded by subject (orange- literacy, green- science, blue-math, white-various sources). I also have some special links to our class website and kidblog. Basically this is one resource that links to many, many resources you can use for reading! Love, love, love Symbaloo! It's free and easy to customize for your students. Click on the picture to check out my symbaloo and some of the cool links I have available.

**Youngzine- you can access this great resource on my Symbaloo! It is a website that has articles with current events and even allows children to write articles and reviews! So cool!**

Voicethread
Voicethread is a super cool tool that students can add or upload pictures and narrate with their voice. There are so many different ways to use voicethread. I had my student turn her expository writing piece into a voicethread. We worked so hard on her voicethread that she won in our district's technology fair and competed at the state level. That was an amazing experience for both of us. Check out her voicethread below.


Google Forms
Another resource that has a multitude of uses! I have used Google forms for virtual reading assignments. Towards the end of the school year my district required that all students sign into their new email accounts. I began emailing students assignments and one assignment required students to read a Time for Kids article on their own, access the Google form via email and answer 10 questions. Coolest part......Google forms organizes the responses into a spreadsheet! Great way to track everyone's comprehension. I have heard of people using a website called Flubaroo with Google forms to grade the work. I haven't experimented yet...definitely on the back to school to do list. I've also seen the Google forms used for reading and writing conferences. Google forms is an overall excellent tool!

Google Form