I hate I couldn’t be there with you all, but I hope you had a good time at the Winter Literacy Conference. Generally speaking, if you can take away just one thing from a conference to use in your classroom, it was worth your while. Obviously, everyone couldn’t attend all sessions, so with this post, share something you learned in one of the sessions you attended. This post will serve as your exit slip for the conference since you didn’t have to put your name on the one you completed there.
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6 comments:
Winter Literacy Conference
February 9, 2008
Even though I think they need to offer more for high school teachers, I did enjoy the sessions I attended. Diane Hartness is just an excellent presenter, so it doesn’t matter what her session is, I’m there. She had great ideas for incorporating technology in the classroom; now I just need better access to it. I would love to require students to post to a blog once a month because it’s something I’ve really enjoyed doing, but I just don’t see it happening with the technology we currently have available.
I also went to a session that focused on community book clubs where parents, guardians, and grandparents can participate in after school book clubs with students. The book clubs were taking place at both an elementary and middle school in Chapin. The presenters (a really cute husband and wife team and he’s the elementary school teacher) showed video clips of their book club meetings. It was really neat. This is something I’d like to try with my team next year.
The last session I attended was on vocabulary. Paula Miller showed us a really cool vocabulary website, freerice.com, which donates food to charity for every correct answer.
All in all, the conference was ok; I would have preferred two class meetings with y’all!
I agree with Claire. I enjoyed Diane Hartness’ session on technology tremendously. I loved the nuts and bolts of blogging and am going to implement them this semester in my own classroom. It was nice to see how it had been done and what her requirements were and I think my classes are ripe for the picking to post a strand and having students to blog. What would make it ideal is to actually have a usable computer in your classroom that students have access to if they finished work early and post blogs (especially for those without a computer at home). But the extra computers for classroom does seem to only be a mirage so for now designating class time at the computer labs seems to be an equitable way to provide students access to successfully participate. I would like to know more about the wiki and movie maker. I am currently incorporating movie maker into a project with my psychology kids (I had seen it in a SS conference in October) and would like not to feel clumsy as I stumble my way through it .
I attended another workshop on writing prompts and how they are graded at the state department but found that it was obsolete for those of us at the high school level. Last year I presented and noted then that there were slim pickings for the high school teachers at the conference and that was again the case for this year. I also would rather just meet the additional class times Claire.
I only attended one of the sessions (and I was proud I made it to that one since I had surgery 2 days earlier) but it was the session Diane Hartness did on incorporating technology in the classroom. She had a great deal of exciting information that I think would really be great for getting some of our students involved. I think that the use of blogging would really capture some of our kids attention and would make them feel as if our school and their teacher is technologically advanced and they would think that is "cool".
However (here is the negative side), as I was in our media center the other day trying to use a computer (not in the lab) it took forever for me to log on and check the one thing I was going to check because the computers are so old and outdated that trying to do a great deal of these things would be hard because of the lack of quality technology in every classroom and the lack of technology in students homes.
Blog Entry # 8 (Winter Literacy Conference)
I attended three very different sessions at the Winter Literacy Conference: “Technology Tricks to Engage Students” by Diane Hartness, “Successful Inclusion” presented by Melanee Harwell-Taylor (special ed teacher at Busbee), and “Vocabulary Instruction” by Paula Miller. I learned something in each session, and I enjoyed all three. The best was definitely Diane Hartness’ session on technology. She is an excellent presenter, and I am personally intrigued by all of the technology that is currently out there. I am typing my response on my new laptop while listening to the 25 songs that I have downloaded on my iTunes account over the past three weeks! Who says you can’t teach an old teacher new tricks! I want to set up a blog for my classroom and get my students to post at least one reading log entry a week to it. Granted the technology at Airport is lacking, but I think I can manage that with the two student computers that I have. I was fascinated by the MyLitSpace template that Diane gave us. I have never been on MySpace so I don’t know what a page looks like on the website. I have a niece who is 25 and very good with technology; I need to email her to see if she has a page I can view. I think the students would enjoy using this template to complete a character sketch using one of their independent reading books. Overall, the conference was good, but I agree with the others’ comments about needing more high school sessions and just spending time with our own study group in lieu of attending the conference.
This conference, while alright, I didn't get as much out of as I did last year. I think the biggest drawback is that there are not many sessions for high school teachers. I understand that it is in elem. where the foundations of writing (good) begin and the seeds planted for enjoying writing are planted but it would be nice if there were more sessions relavant to us high schoolers. I did gain some insight with one of the sessions I attended, can't remember the dudes name or the title of the class but it dealt with scoring papers using practice papers scored by the SC Dept. of Education. I thought this was pretty interesting in that students can see what exactly is being looked for in the writing process so that they can prepare for the writing portion of HSAP.
Winter Literacy Conference
I agree with the gals! The conference just does not have enough for high school teachers. The opening session was dull, at least for me. The State Department lady was talking mainly to ELA teachers. I know that it is important for all teachers to know the ELA standards because of the vary tests but not in the details that we were given. Diane Hartness was by far the best presenter. Her technology session was full of information that I would LOVE to implement in my class. And, to be truthful, I did not realize how much “junk” is out there and how careful teachers have to be with their classes. I wish we had enough technology for ALL our students to use some of her ideas. The other session I attended was mainly for middle school teachers and how to align ELA standards to other subjects. Like Jamie and Claire, I would have preferred to meet 2 afternoons with my class!!
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