PLATE tech-tonics conference

Today the year 2 MAET students put on a tech conference. It was extremely informative and I learned a bunch of new technologies that I am excited to use in my classroom. The first was screen captures by using a program called Jing. Jing allows you to take images from your computer screen to make an instructional video. Here is my sample, giving directions on using Picnik to edit pictures.

(I am having some technical difficulties posting my screen capture, but hopefully it will be up soon!)

The next seminar I attended was on copyright issues. It was very confusing because copyright laws are a huge mess and never match up. I did learn a few tricks on making sure my students and I are protected from copyright laws. I also learned about Creative Commons which will be useful in finding pictures, videos, and sounds to use in my classroom.

The last seminar I attended was on using podcasts and vodcasts in the classroom. I already had the background on creating a podcast, which was helpful. But, we also learned about different places where a teacher can find podcasts/vodcasts that are pre-made and ready to use. We also discussed how we could use podcasts in our classrooms and recorded it onto a podcast that will be up on the PLATE website.