“Katie Logan is the technology director for the Wyoming e-Academy of Virtual Education. The Academy is located in rural Wyoming on the Wind River Indian Reservation, and serves mainly Native American students from the reservation as well as some other students from other high schools across the state.”
from http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=60
The presentation focuses on the difficulties/issues/obstacles/successes and failures of the online school.
I found this presentation fairly interesting actually, as I did not realize a school like this exsisted. I can imagine that (in the area that she is in) this is a somewhat difficult task to accomplish. Actually, it probably is considering the amount of obstacles that she does list. Because the school is in an ‘at-risk’ area, the faculty has had to make a number of changes to the ‘normal’ school system. For instance, attendance is not mandatory; as long as the students log in once (even for only one minute) every 10 days, then they will not be ‘kicked out of school’. I find it interesting that this online school is in fact on a reservation (to be honest I’m not sure why I find that so interesting though). That being said, obviously the majority (90%) of the students are in fact Native-American (or First Nations, or Indian, or whichever we would like to go with).
Again, I found this presentation to be fairly interesting and, I am probably going to add her blog to my Google Reader, so that I can find out more.
The second presentation I watched was entitled “If All My Classes Did This”, it was presented by Wendy Wolfe on October 19th, 2007.
This presentation focused on cartoon creation for the classroom (ToonDoo and Read, Write, Think) as well as Gliffy, Zoho and GCast.
I found ToonDoo rather exciting actually. I don’t know if I would use it in my future classroom, but you never know. ToonDoo (unlike Read, Write, Think) allows you to publish the cartoon to the web.
Gliffy is also a great program. You can use pictures and text (in any language). In Gliffy, you can do different things, like create floor plans and flow charts. Gliffy also allows for collaboration (like Google Docs).
Zoho, also seems like a great program, especially for those who do not have a powerpoint program. It does not, however, allow for sounds or animation (like a regular powerpoint program) but, it is completely web based and therefore there is no need to carry around a jumpdrive with your presentation.
GCast, is a podcasting site that would most likely come in handy in any circumstance. It would be great for making presentations both in class and out of class for both students and teachers.
I learnt a lot by watching this podcast, and I will most likely begin to use at least a few of these tools, in the near future.
The third presentation I viewed is entitled “What Did You Do in School Yesterday, Today, and Three Years Ago?”, it was presented by H Songhai on October 24, 2008.
I think it was a great presentation, very well planned and presented. The presentation focused on what H Songhai does in his (paperless of more than three years) classroom. Also, he talks about a trip (to look at Universities) that he (along with some co-workers) and 13 students went on; he talks about how at the end of the trip none of them had even taken a picture and therefore had nothing to say “I was here”, even though the majority of them had a number of different pieces of technology.
I find it neat that he has had a paperless classroom for more than three years now. His class uses blogs and Wikis, among other things. He also encourages his students to take pictures of notes, rather than writing them down. Personally, I don’t think I would go to quite that extent.
All in all, I think I have learned a lot from these three presentations, and I may just go back and view some more of them. Just from the few podcasts that I have seen, I am already looking forward to viewing podcasts from the next conference.
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