TCEA 2009 Pictures - Finally!

Classroom 2.0 Storms Houston


In what was a nice run-up to NECC next week, last Friday, June 20, I had the opportunity to participate in Classroom 2.0 Live in Houston, Texas. Steve Hargadon and Stephanie Sandifer co-hosted the event and there were many eager-to-learn participants that enjoyed discussing the many web 2.0 tools that can help classroom teachers.

This workshop was a great opportunity for me personally to meet, face to face, many of the folks I converse with online. One of the ideas that came from it that I'd like to see happen in the future is for Houston-area ed tech (and non-ed tech) folks to gather face-to-face periodically to extend the conversations about all things tech and more Texas and Houston specific topics. This idea was originally put out there by Chris Duke and I hope it will take fruition soon.

Steve shared one site of note that I thought was interesting. It is Weebly, a really cool and easy way to create websites by dragging and dropping embeddable components. My eight year old took an immediate liking to it and started dropping all sorts of media to create his first page. I think this tool could be a great way to introduce younger children to creating content that is dynamic and fun.

See many of you at NECC next week! I am SO looking forward to the conversations and the networking and ways to better implement technology for my teachers and students.

Eat more ribs! ;-)


TCEA 2009 Sessions Accepted

I just received an email from TCEA yesterday announcing that both my workshop offerings for the 2009 conference were accepted. Yea!
  1. Google Earth - Ideas for the Classroom (3 hr.)
  2. GarageBand in the Classroom (3 hr.)
Note to self: Next time, come up with more interesting titles!

Now, I have some work to do.

Finally! TCEA 2008 Pictures

I finally got around to posting some pictures of the Texas Twitter Meet-up in Austin.


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TCEA 2008

You can also see them in Flickr.

TCEA 2008 - GarageBand in the Classroom

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On Friday, February 8, I presented a conference session entitled Garage Band in the Classroom. This session was to show teachers how they can integrate music creation and composition across different curriculum areas. I truly love this stuff but it is difficult to really get deep in 45 short minutes. I may propose a 3-hour workshop next year in a lab setting so that teachers can immediately create some cross-curricular projects that they can bring back to their classrooms.

This is the first time I've recorded one of my sessions. Sometimes it's painful to listen. I'm going to go through and count how many times I said "umm...". This will definitely be a good learning experience!

I have included within this post the uStream recording of the session (sorry, but it's audio only...not sure why the video flaked out). I've also embedded the presentation slides.

Additionally, Helen (@techchick94 on Twitter) from TechChickTips.net Live Blogged the session. Thanks Helen!





TCEA Session - Randy Rodgers - Beyond Blogging and Wikis: Amazing Web 2.0 Tools

Crispen's Guide to What's New and What's Next

Interactive American History Websites

TCEA Session - Patrick Crispen - Complete and Total Waste of Time