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Ignite Day 3..and freebies!

My mind is still spinning with all the fabulous new things I've learned about this week! While I've enjoy the yummy food, great networking, and amazing ideas I admit it'll be nice to not wake up at "teacher time" tomorrow morning. I'll go back to school in August refreshed and ready to try new things. My favorite session of the day was before lunch. When teachers first arrived to their seats, this adorable postcard was waiting for us.

How adorable is this? Wouldn't something like this be fabulous for open house or parent teacher conferences? Love it!

The presentation included tons of great ideas to connect with classrooms globally. Take your time to click on each tab. Make sure you scroll completely down each page so you don't miss the freebies. Enjoy!

Ignite Day 2

Silly me, I didn't realize my previous post about Ignite Day 1 was all kinds of crazy with the video I posted. That's what I get for writing a post on very little sleep and no caffeine! I fixed the problem and got plenty of sleep for the second day of fun and learning. Sadly, I forgot to take pics of today. *face palm* I will get plenty of sleep AND take pictures tomorrow! On to the events of the day...
The morning started with more yummy breakfast provided and a panel discussion on BYOD. For those of you unfamiliar with BYOD it stands for Bring Your Own Device. While sitting in this panel I was chatting about possibilities with my principal and coworker. I can't wait until the school year starts so we can start implementing some of the amazing ideas we heard discussed. I found a Pinterest board with some great resources to get started.
Walk the Talk was the morning session I attended. I love the included link to the site with the presentation.

During the day I went back and forth on Twitter between the hashtags #ignite13 and #iplza13 for iPadpalooza. I wish I could have been in both places at once today. I loved seeing all the fabulous, fired up tweets today! The rest of the day was filled with more yummy food and fun with Educreations and iMotion. I  felt like a kid in a candy store with iMotion. If you haven't tried it you'll love it!

I think this video sums up today nicely, and helps remind me of why I teach.

Ignite 13 Day 1

This week I'm fortunate enough to attend the Ignite 13 conference in Frisco, Tx. Today was day 1 and my mind is still trying to soak up all the wonderful information I learned! The morning kicked off with the keynote speaker, Lee Crockett. This was my first time to hear him speak at a conference. I can honestly say he is one of the best I've heard at any conference/workshop hands down. He was engaging, humorous, and gave attendees time to chat and share with each other.

If your on Twitter I highly recommend following him. The man was seriously on fire! The 90 minutes of his presentation held my attention from start to finish.

The morning session I attended included working with some fabulous apps I'd never heard of before. My favorites were Nearpod and Educreations. Nearpod is a free app for iPad. Teachers can create presentations accessible with a pin. You can monitor students paying attention, create polls, and set up options for students to collaborate. I loved working with this app! At one point in the session, teachers did a quick demonstation.

Obviously my iPad writing skills need some work.

Educreations is another free app for iPad. With this app you can turn your iPad into an interactive whiteboard. Sadly I couldn't capture any pictures of the examples we did, but you can browse shared videos either through the app or website. I love this example:

The afternoon session I attended was equally awesome. I could blog about it, or I could just give you the awesome link. You'll need iTunes to view this if you don't already have an account. 

Favorites Symbaloo

I love Symbaloo, it's such a timesaver! If you have never used it before, it's highly recommended by teachers. I have a class webmix my students use, and recently I created one with my favorite teacher sites. Click on the link to see what favorites are guaranteed to take up my time. I'm always on the lookout for new things to add!

Cupcake Poms

Welcome to my first blog post! Tissue poms are popping up in classrooms everywhere right now. I was feeling crafty and decided to do something unique with this concept, so I turned to Google and did a search for cupcake pom poms. Within seconds I had tons of adorable images filling my laptop screen. I loved the easy to follow directions found at Fun Favors and decided to take the plunge. I headed to Michael's with my teacher badge in hand (hello 15% everyday teacher discount) and purchased a 6 inch Styrofoam ball for practice. There's always cupcake liners in my kitchen so I didn't need any of those.

Eventually the pom will hang from my classroom ceiling so I marked and secured a spot with a paper clip. I took extra care with the cupcake liners so they wouldn't tear. My manicure made that sometimes difficult. Slowly but surely the ball started to get covered.

For my practice ball I decided on two different types of cupcake liners. After an hour, a burnt index finger, and watching Bravo my little project was finally complete!

After taking this picture I filled in that awkward space at the bottom with one more liner. Voila all finished! I'll get started on a few more of these soon so each group in my classroom has one above their area.