Playing with Media in Houston, Texas

Today I’m in Houston, Texas, (Missouri City, to be exact) for the 2011 Fort Bend ISD District Technology Conference. My primary message is: As educators we need to make time for playing with media! The theme of the FBISD conference this year is “Inspiration, Innovation, and Integration.” In addition to the opening keynote, “Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World,” I’m sharing four breakout sessions. One of them is repeated. Here are links to my session resources and presentation slides for each one. All of these are linked from my primary handouts page on Google Sites, available from wiki.wesfryer.com. Kathy Schrock, Tammy Worcester, Howie DiBlasi, Susan Anderson, Jim Holland, and Michael Garfield are among the other featured speakers at the conference. Former Sugarland mayor, David Wallace, will close out the conference. It should be a great day! Here are my session links: Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World (Slides available as a 1.7 MB PDF) Today I’ll be sharing a shorter and redesigned version of this presentation!

Much of the world has gone digital, so must learning at school. Creativity is vital, and good leadership matters. Stagnant, accomodation-level technology integration makes technology investments in our schools a waste of money. School leaders can and should encourage teachers to use digital learning tools in transformative ways to open new doors of opportunity for students as well as parents. By focusing on creating, communicating / sharing, and collaborating, principals can help develop a shared instructional vocabulary with teachers which is focused on student engagement. Without creation, there can be no creativity. How will you let your students create? How will you give students choices? How will your students teach the curriculum? These are essential questions to ask together with teachers, as we seek to effectively (and legally) “talk with media / pictures” and leverage the constructive power of digital media tools for learning inside and outside the classroom.

Digital Storytelling on a Shoestring & Celebrate Texas Voices (repeated)

Digital storytelling is applicable to learners of all ages, in all content areas. In this session we will view different examples of digital storytelling across the curriculum, and explore free tools which are available to get started creating and publishing digital stories on your classroom website. Digital stories can take many forms. In the context of this session, digital stories which include digital images/photographs and audio narration will be explored, using the website VoiceThread. Options for creating digital stories in software programs like PhotoStory3 and iMovie will also be addressed.

In addition to the website PlayingWithMedia.com, the Celebrate Texas Voices Ning learning community, and my wiki session links, I’ve updated presentation slides for this session on a Google Presentation: Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing

As learners and educational leaders it is critical that we share our ideas with others. Publishing our ideas online should not be limited to just “final drafts” of our work, we also should share ideas that occur to us during the day, great videos we see, student work in progress, and more. If you can send email, you can publish rich media with Posterous. In this session we’ll learn specifically how to create and use a personal publishing website with your email account. We’ll also explore other tools for creating and sharing curriculum under open licensing terms (open educational resources.) It’s critical ALL teachers learn to share ideas online and PUBLISH curriculum using rich media. Come learn how.

iOS Apps for Productivity & Fun (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch)

Bring your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to this hands-on, interactive workshop as together we explore some of the best applications for productivity as well as fun available for Apple’s mobile devices! Free as well as commercial apps will be demonstrated including applications for education, photo sharing, news, social networking, digital storytelling, musical expression, art, audio recording, games, and more! If you have an iOS device (iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch) you’ll learn about a wealth of useful as well as engaging applications in this dynamic workshop.

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