Sunday, July 27, 2014

GISD iCon...And I Had Some Work Done

Hey everyone! I intended on blogging this weekend, but got behind. I was a school shopping/crafting fool this weekend. The good news is I'm 95% done buying what I need. Did you notice my blog got a face lift?! I LOVE it! Tessa over at Tales from a Blog Designer did a great job.
This past Thursday my district held it's first ever iCon. It was professional development based on the EdCamp model meaning you were free to come and go to sessions as you pleased. It was exciting to have so many people from my school attend! If I'm not mistaken I think we had the largest number of people from one school in attendance.
Teacher techie friends <3
Professional development is always great when you're in the same space with other teacher friends who are just as excited and ready to learn as you are. Don't you agree? 
My coworker and I presented a session called Tech 4 Tots. You can find a link to our presentation here
My techie friend Darla was an excellent volunteer during Winning Words. I was having hot mess hair issues that day!
Winning Words is a free (who doesn't love that) group of apps that are excellent for vocabulary. 
Have your minis play independently or in a learning station and pick your level of difficulty. It's easy peasy and can be learned quickly.
During the session I showed the easy levels, but the medium and difficult levels are excellent introductions to higher level vocabulary words.
Chatterpix was my new favorite app of the day. I definitely can see this app being used for some readers theater or summarizing for a lesson or story. 
Start with any picture you choose. Upload from your camera roll when if you don't plan on taking a new picture.

Draw a line for the mouth
You'll have 30 seconds to record what you want.
Your picture does the talking, and provides some laughs at how silly the mouth can make the picture look.
You can add whatever borders, props, or text you would like. A quick heads up; some of the props may not be appropriate for your minis so monitor choices carefully.
Voila! Another easy peasy lemon squeezy app.
There was and still is so much being shared from iCon I couldn't possibly blog about it all. That plus the fact I get easily distracted while writing one post and it takes me forever. My blogging attention span is apparently the same as a goldfish. Follow the hashtag #gisdicon on Twitter to learn more. 










2 comments: