The IT4Educators instructors joined more than 2,400 educators, administrators and technology specialists and over 100 vendors at the TIES 2010 Education Technology Conference in early December at the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We attended the conference as both participants and contributors.
Andi Bodeau presented Using Moodle as an Assessment Tool. During the session, she modeled and showed examples of the various Moodle activities that can be used to assess student learning. Participants also learned how mobile devices can be used as assessment tools in Moodle. Rojanne Brown presented a session called Google Search Discovered. Participants gained ideas on how to integrate Google tools such as Google Custom Search and Google Search Story into teaching and learning.
Amy Kretsch demonstrated BrightLink, Epson’s new interactive whiteboard solution – a short throw projector with interactive capabilities that does not require an interactive whiteboard. Ryan Semans, presented a session on using SMART Response Systems to promote higher-order thinking skills, investigating how student response systems can support teacher and student learning with respect to assessment strategies, lesson intentionality, vision for extension activities and higher-order thinking skills integration.
Course creation is tremendously rewarding and actually quite fun. Courses we create at IT4Educators always have the characteristics of being professionally engaging to us and relevant to best practice in teaching and learning.
The course I am working on right now is a Google Search course. Ryan already offers a Google Integration course which is a terrific survey course allowing exploration of a myriad of Google tools. My new course will be specifically related to all (or most) of the Google search tools.
I’m not talking about your grandmother’s Google. I’m talking about cool, relevant tools specifically designed for classroom use.
When I was in Boulder last summer at the Google Teacher Academy, I was overwhelmed with new learning regarding all that is Google. What really hit home for me was Google Custom Search, a solution I’ve been longing for. Google Custom Search is a great tool for directed, intentional, safe web searches for students.
With Google Custom Search you can give your students authentic search experiences in a safe environment. You determine the sites that students are searching, and you can also scaffold student learning by adding key word suggestions to the search page.
Google Custom Search is one of many Google search tools you will integrate into teaching and learning with the new course.
Watch for it to appear in our IT4Educators course listings in May or June. Also coming soon, is a Google Docs course developed by Ryan.
