I just returned home after attending the CUE 2015 conference in Palm Springs, California, for Computer Using Educators. Conferences are always inspiring, and this time I picked up a bunch of new ideas I can use immediately! Among the tech coming soon to my classroom:
1. Minecraft.edu This is an educational version of the popular game. We are already using it to build landmarks in ancient civilizations. Now I can use it in language arts–imagine building a scene from a novel!
2. Google Classroom Truly on the way to a paperless classroom, this allows students to receive assignments, complete them on Google Docs, and turn them in. They can provide feedback, save them to their own Goodle Drive, and create Google Forms. I can also use Google Forms for online quizzes!
3. Kidblog A safe way for students to each have their own blog. Teachers monitor content, of course. We’ll also participate in Quadblogging, where four classes share a month. One class blogs for a week while the other three focus on commenting on the blogs. Then the second class blogs for a week, and the others comment, etc. What wonderful feedback!
4. Skype is a marvelous face-to-face opportunity for students. I envision Skyping with a park ranger next year before visiting Alcatraz, with another class participating in NaNoWriMo, maybe with the NaNoWriMo director or even the vice mayor of San Jose!
Four ways that will challenge me to engage more students and teach them digital citizenship through daily Internet use. Now I just need to hijack the iPad cart…or get one of my own.
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