ECIS–Technology Conference De-brief

What an amazing weekend this has been!  I arrived in London – actually Cobham, 40 minutes outside of London - on Wednesday (March 13th) for the ECIS Tech Conference titled: Learning to Love the iGeneration, and it’s been a whirlwind of activity and thinking for me ever since.  Here is a brief overview of what I’ve been doing:

Wednesday – We got in late, so we stayed around the hotel and ate fish and chips at the local pub – The Fairmille.

Thursday – I didn’t have meetings, but my colleague, Jen Kadiri, went over the first day of leadership meetings.  I will have a full report from her in a blog post coming soon.  While she was in meetings, I walked to the train station and went into the city where I got to walk around and see some of the key monuments.  Here is some of what I saw: 

  

    

 

Friday – We began the conference, which was located at ACS International School in Cobham.  (I have collected so many ideas and suggestions that it will take me MONTHS to give you everything I learned.  So, each Sunday, I will be posting a Conference debrief with further details on one of the speakers I saw.)  Here are the speakers I saw on Friday:

 

Morning Keynote:  Marc Prensky, author of the book Teaching Digital Natives.

 

Breakout Session 1:  Speaking their Language – where I learned about some cool programs to use with students who are language learners

Breakout Session 2: ME!  This is when I presented my workshop on Using Technology to Create Community.  It was well attended and went very well.  You can see what the participants had to say about the 16 websites HERE, and what your fellow blog readers had to say HERE.  By the way, if you are one of those who took the time to critique the websites before today, check our e-mail box for an e-mail from TransferBigFiles, as you will ALL  be receiving the 12 teacher resources in the Goodie Bag Giveaway.

Breakout Session 3:  A panel discussion on how curriculum should change to include technology

 

Afternoon Keynote:  Chandran Nair, a key spokesman for environmental and economic issues in Asia and author of the book Consumptionomics.

 After all of the exciting learning, we attended a wonderful dinner at a local winery and spoke to teachers from Germany, Doha, Italy and England.  We also learned about the fabulous world of geo-caching, so look for a post on that soon!

Saturday – We headed back to the conference full of excitement from the first day’s activities.

Morning Keynote Speakers: 

Jeff Utrecht, who spoke about how students are using technology to change the world and author of the book Reach: Building Communities and Networks for Professional Development

Julie Lindsey  who is a founder of the Flat Classroom movement

Breakout Session 1:  Sorting to Searching with Jeff Utrecht, an amazing session on how to teach kids to use Google to the full of its worth

Breakout Session 2:  Using iBook in your classroom, an example of using this program to create a book about the Olympics

Breakout Session 3:  Flipping the Classroom and Differentiation, a session with Heather Martin, who creates amazing videos and posts them on her YouTube channel in order to flip her classroom.

Afternoon Keynote Speaker:  Caliean Hargrave from IBM, who spoke about the technologies that IBM are creating and the programs they have to work with kids

 

As you can see, this has been an amazing amount of information.  I have provided links to each of the people I have links for, feel free to check them out, but also feel free to stop by each Sunday for more detailed information about each presentation.