Friday's Workshop

Hi everyone, hope all is going well. It's hard to believe that we are almost done with the semester! I found Friday's Workshop to be really interesting. All of the sessions sounded great, it was hard for me to choose. One of the sessions I sat in on was 21st Century Learning Communities - Promethean with speaker Gordon Froloff. Let's start by saying it was a definite sales pitch, but a very interesting one. The Promethean Activboard is similiar to smartboards, this particular board carries the Promethean name. The speaker showed us all of the software that was available with this system. It is definitely a way to bring the classroom into the 21st Century. An interesting feature that this active board had was a hand held component, like a cell phone, so that the children could answer any questions the teacher presented. The answers would then automatically post to the board and show feedback right away. The hand held device had capabilities for students to answer multiple choice questions, true/false, and yes/no questions. It even allows for the student to answer "I don't know". Results can be shown in a multiple of graphs for the students to see. There are also programs that allow the students to drag the corrects answer to the question that was given. If the answer is incorrect, it will not stick to the question. This provides immediate feedback which is fantastic. One example that was used was a math lesson involving money. The money was big and clear on the board and the students were able to drag the pictures to show the amount that was asked. It also helped to show how to make change. We were told that all of the information that is entered can be transfered to Excel for recording keeping. I think that there would be a lot of great lessons this could be used for in a classroom, however, I am sure the cost is high. The speaker didn't really address the cost. Regarding the workshop in general, all of the speakers were great and it is amazing to see how far technology has brought us. I especially enjoyed the session where the speakers compared how we researched information at one time -you know the library where you would have to take out a zillion books to gather information. Now, information is available at our fingertips!! It makes me realize that we as future teachers have so much available to us to create an exceptional learning environment. To me, it seems very overwhelming, but I know that it can be done. Have a great day, see everyone on Friday and I will bring in some snack, not sure what yet, but something sweet.