Thing 13 Conference Reflections

I listened and watched to the keynote speakers, Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay, present Time to Grow under Kicking It Up a Notch.  I was especially interested in this session since I like Vicki’s Cool Cat Teacher Blog that I review on my Google Reader.  One of the main ideas in this session is that teachers need to take 15 minutes a day to explore something new so that their classrooms are constantly growing and not staying stagnate.  These two presenters are also involved in the Flat Classroom concept where “everyone is a learner; everyone is a teacher.”  They think we must prepare students for a society full of technology, and therefore, we need to teach digital literacy.  In order to teach and prepare the students, we must be the researchers and the monitors and be engaged ourselves.  The new model is more student focused instead of teacher focused with plenty of peer review and “knowledge construction via collaborative learning.”  Many other interesting thoughts and ideas about Web 2.0 were mentioned, such as Second Life, a virtual 3D world just to mention one.  The session was 50 minutes long but held my interest and made me understand more why this Web 2.0 is very important for teachers and students.

I also listened to Asking Bigger Questions About Assessment by Gardner Campbell under the Prove It section.  Since using Web 2.0 requires collaborative learning, new methods of assessment need to be implemented.  The presenter shared his thoughts on this new “problem” and gave new ideas for assessment.  One tool he uses is an Apgar Test originally created by Virginia Apgar, which has the student respond to questions about his or her own preparedness.  I found these questions (on slide 13 of his slideshow) to be very interesting and would like to come up with a similar format with my sixth graders.