ISTE 2011



I am very pleased and excited to be able to attend ISTE this year.  My school district is allowing me to attend and learn for the full 3 days!  By paying my entrance fee I also receive a membership to ISTE which I think will definitely be useful as an educator and instructional tech student. 

If anyone has any conference suggestions, those of you that have attended please let me know.  It will be nice to have some of the techies from my district with me to explore the conference.  The site claims that the exhibitors will be linked to the national standards, which ISTE seems to call NETS.  I know New Jersey has their 21st Century Skills that they have created to incorporate technology, but I am interested in seeing how they compare with the national standards.  Overall, most people say that New Jersey school systems are above most of the other states when it comes to education, it will be interesting to see how my curriculum and what I am learning at Stockton is represented at ISTE and what we can continue to add to since we all know how mailable tech ed can be!

Welcome to the classroom, I am your personal learning concierge.

I was watching the PLN video posted for our Intro class today and I love the concept of not being the teacher, the sage on the stage, the know-it-all, but instead your personal learning concierge.  I like it so much I may have to make a poster and put it in my classroom.  It's such an amazing concept.  I am not here to book your room, brush your teeth, deliver you room service, or turn down your bed, but I can help you get those things done.

Between this video and Tolis' (if you haven't seen it, check out his blog), its so much more apparent that we need to change the way we educate.  I know its not going to happen over night, but I hope it will come soon.  I don't arrange my classroom in the typical row by row style, I use technology as much as possible, but I still feel like I am not doing enough sometimes.  It's hard to accomplish everything we have to do in a day.  Like I love the idea of using the RSS feed and I have set this up, but its hard to read everything, everyday.  I like some of the suggestions I found when searching about PLN's on Google, but please comment if you have a way you keep up to date with all the web info without going on information overload!

Not enough hours in the day...

With all the things going on in our professional and personal lives its hard to keep track of everything!  I liked Tolis' idea to cross things off on our course syllabus, but I still feel like my to do list is outnumbered by the things I need to cross off.  I thought my smartphone would help me keep better track of my life and schedule, but I don't have the time to put everything on my calander. 

The amount of paperwork teachers are required to keep, along with all the things we have to keep track of leads to a mess.  I think of that Free Credit Score commercial.  Check the weather, check your mail...check, check, check.  Couldn't it all be located in one place???  There has to be a way to streamline somethings.  I am alway looking for new ways to keep organized.  I even had a student this week thank me for keeping things in the classroom organized, but I didn't tell her how disorganized I feel. 

Somethings that keep me organized are the TeacherWorks program that came with my textbook series.  It has all the resources and lesson plans in one place.  I keep my students organized by using a Google Site with all their assignments and resources.  One way I keep all my favorite websites organized is by using a Delicious account.  I can access my sites on any computer by signing in, and on my laptop the Delicious toolbar keeps them right at the top of my screen, right at my fingertips.  It reminds me of things I wanted to go back to at another time and things I wanted to share with family or colleagues. 

I am always on the look out for new tools to keep organized, if you have any feel free to post!