I began the day listening to Temple Grandin speak. I had to sit outside the main event because I was planning to attend another session and couldn't make the whole presentation. Temple Grandin was diagnosed with Autism at two years old. She worked hard to not be just another person on the spectrum and emphasized to the audience that it is a spectrum with a range of abilities and talents. She discussed how everyone thinks differently and she was a visual thinker. It's important to have visual thinkers in society because they are the world's problem solvers. Temple Grandin was very motivational and made me realize how much we label our students and makes me hope that one day it will end.
Afterwards, I attended a conversation starter about digital badges. The session focused on Mozilla's Open Badges with a spotlight on Passport by Purdue University, another badge program currently in beta. Badges are earned through meeting goals and a set criteria then displayed on a digital bulletin board for all to see. This effort would be a great way of microcredentialing an e-portfolio, collecting evidence, and easy to keep track of (data tracking). Digital badges promote competency based learning and connect well to standards. There are a lot of add-ins users can integrate with the digital badge system such as Learning management integration and social media sharing. According to presenters, the process of implementing the badge system was fairly easy. They also said the leader board was a great motivational tool for badge earners.
New York Public Library is using digital badges with its summer reading program. I think it would be a great way to track readers' progress but there need to be intrinsic incentives applied to the program as well so readers learn to read for the sake of reading and not just to earn badges. I could see using badges to ensure students met required tasks for a research project or achieved lesson objectives. I could also see badges applicable to short term projects. This is definitely something I want to experiment with in the future.
I attended the inaugural session of Apps, Apps, and More Apps: Best Apps for Teaching and Learning sponsored by AASL. The committee highlighted the fact that free apps aren't necessarily the best value; you get what you pay for; however, I still found their choices to be cost efficient. Unfortunately, I found the list to be a bit skewed with many resources for the early and elementary teachers but still discovered some great apps for middle school and high school students. The categories were: books, STEM, organization and management, social sciences, content creation, and media sharing.
In the Books category, I discovered two useful resources for middle school/high school students. Al Gore: Our Choice lays out a plan to solve the climate crisis while acting as a young readers' edition of An Inconvenient Truth. Shakespeare in Bits allows students to explore Shakespeare's plays in an interactive way using visual storytelling, full narration, and character webs to bring the classic literature to life.
The STEM category had a lot to offer. Science 360 created by the National Science Foundation contains visual scientific explorations, a built-in news feed, and social media capabilities including tagging to inspire students to discover science. The NASA app allows students to track the space station, follow related TV news and NASA' Twitter feed, and jam out to Third Rock Radio. Operation Math is geared mostly to upper elementary and middle school students to practice their basic operations skills, participate in training room exercises, and complete timed missions to unlock rewards. Simple physics offers physics challenges for secondary students which range in difficulty. Lastly, Tinkerbox offers engineering puzzle games, game design, sharing functions for students in upper elementary and middle school.
I was a bit disappointed with the apps on the Organization and Management portion of the list. The citation maker EasyBib, cloud storage Dropbox, and note-taking app EverNote all made the list; While these are amazing apps, I feel like they are apps which have been popular the past couple years, people are already utilizing, and therefore the list needed to showcase different tools. I did however find Schoology, an online Learning Management System where students and teachers can be connected 24/7, to be a useful tool.
A great deal of the social sciences apps were geared toward the elementary age level; however, a couple may be used at the fifth and sixth grade levels for special projects. Dependent on cost and content, I could see the value in purchasing Britannica Kids: Ancient Egypt recommended for grades K-6. The app contains reference information and engaging learning activities. MyCongress gives secondary students an inside look at Congress.
Lastly, apps for content creation and media sharing. EduCreations recommended for grades K-12 is an interactive whiteboard app. You can use it to create short multimedia presentations with sound, images,and text. Kid blog (and arguably related platforms) is a great place to blog safely and learn the basics of blogging. GarageBand allows user to create music or podcasts and is widely popular. Lastly, Videolicious (similar to Animoto) is a video editing app which can be used K-12 in three easy steps: choose content, narrate, and add copyright free music to create your own video.
Overall, I found there were some useful apps on the list and I will be happy to try some of these apps out in the library! Check out the full list here: http://www.ala.org/aasl/standards-guidelines/best-apps/2013
I spent some time in the exhibit hall and got to meet one of my favorite authors. Although I still love his books, I was admittedly disappointed by Gordon Korman's author signing. I recovered from my fan girl moment I had with Steve Sheinkin and spoke very light heartedly to Mr. Korman saying that I discovered his books a few years ago and loved reading his work; to which he coldly responded thank you, signed, and I just walked away.
The second day was overall successful.
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Location:Chicago, IL
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