ITSC Program Events

Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative

Sunday, February 15, 2009, 5:30 p.m.
Mt. Hood Ballroom:
Sir Ken Robinson

National education systems worldwide are being reformed to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. As a respected adviser to governments in Europe, Asia and the United States, Sir Ken argues in this powerful presentation that many countries are pushing reforms in the wrong direction. Drawing from his groundbreaking book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, he explains why too many are locked into a model of education shaped by the Industrial Revolution and a narrow idea of academic ability. Urging schools and colleges everywhere to urgently rethink basic assumptions about intelligence and achievement, Sir Ken focuses on the vital questions: Why is it essential to promote creativity? What’s the problem? Why do so many adults think they’re not creative? Most children are buzzing with ideas. What happens to them as they grow up? What should be done? Is everyone creative or just a select few? Can creativity be developed? If so, how? In exploring these questions, Sir Ken argues for radical changes in how we educate all students to meet the extraordinary challenges of living and working in the 21st century.

Takeaways include:

• How education wastes more talent than it saves
• The three core objectives of 21st Century education
• Why we’re all smarter than we think
• What schools and colleges should do, and how governments should help

TEACHERS, DON'T JUST TEACH IT -- INSPIRE with IT!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Mt. Adams: Marco Torres

IT'S NOT ABOUT CLICKING AND DRAGGING! IT'S NOT ABOUT BLOGGING, PODCASTING, WEB 2.0'N! It's about teaching and learning. Or Learning and teaching (if you want to be picky). In this "flattening" world, we are required to be more creative, more flexible, more community-based -- however, teachers -- the world still needs GOOD, empathetic, ingenuous educator, a teacher, a Yoda! Yeah, you! The kids, more than ever, need us! Multimedia is a language to our students. If we're smart and ready -- we can use it to be very academic and very rigorous (and have fun a long the way, too). If we use multimedia right -- we can empower in ways that we never imagined. Turn your classroom(s) into a stage, a studio, and into a community and HURRY! The kids are waiting for you to catch up!

Telling AWESOME Stories through Photography
Mt. Adams: Marco Torres

In this workshop teachers will explore, hands on, the power of the digital storytelling through photography, music, sound and delivery. Teachers will learn how to use photography, photo software, movie making software, and audio recording software to create mega-cool photo stories.

Making Technology Transparent in the Classroom
Cascade A/B: Dottie Coven and Bob Friedler

With all of the new technology and changes happening in classroom environments how do we make these tools transparent and part of our everyday teaching experience? It is imperative that we learn to integrate technology as an vital part of our classroom environments and all teachers need a certain set of basic tools to integrate technology fluidly into their curriculum. How do we plan for and work towards a base level of technology in all classrooms? How do we choose tools that impact student learning? Spend time looking at a wide variety of classroom tools and begin to prioritize what you need and what will most impact instruction in your classrooms, schools and districts.

Changing the Culture - Investing in the Future
Tuesday Only
Garden A/B: Colt Gill & Todd Hamilton

Instructional technology is here to stay, yet many of our schools struggle to:

1. keep up with current technology,
2. provide professional development to staff and colleagues, and
3. know what effective instructional technology looks like in the classroom.

Join us for an opportunity to hear how two school districts are working with administrators to take on these struggles and challenge the status quo to CHANGE the culture and invest in the future.

Tools to Help Administrators Work
Monday Only
Garden A/B: Skip Offenhauser

Blogs, wikis, podcasts, Moodle - these are terms most of us are familiar with but does today's school administrator actually use them? This workshop is designed specifically for school administrators to learn how Web 2.0 tools can improve communication, collaboration, and productivity. In this three-hour workshop, administrators will be provided with specific examples and learn practical and seamless ways to integrate Web 2.0 tools into their busy lives.

Extreme Makeover Education Edition
St. Helens A: Steve Dembo

No blog? No podcast? No problem! The world of Web 2.0 has something for everyone, but it can be a rather overwhelming pool to dive into. We'll take the absolute beginner and give them a complete digital makeover. This practical, non-linear, hands-on workshop will demonstrate exactly how to get started in the world of Web 2.0, which sites educators absolutely must have a presence on, and tricks for avoiding information overload. Enter a newbe, leave a Web 2.0 guru!

Cell Phone Digital Storytelling
St. Helens B: Wesley Fryer

Today's "average" cell phone includes a computer processor more powerful than those used by NASA in the 1960s when U.S. astronauts landed on the moon, yet many schools continue to ban cell phone use at school. In this session we'll learn how to use cell phones in powerful ways to communicate effectively and SAFELY on the Internet. We'll learn to post and share digital images as well as record digital audio files which can be integrated into interactive digital stories. A variety of websites are available which support the use of cell phones for digital storytelling. For most U.S. schools, CONTROL is the key word when it comes to web 2.0 sites and multimedia technologies. How can teachers and administrators CONTROL the comments and interactive feedback which is shared by others on the web? We'll explore websites and instructional practices which permit teachers to have control over web-based feedback of student projects, and also support the development of digital citizenship skills for students.

Google Earth Classroom Projects
St. Helens C: Lynn Lary

Imagine that you are a student and have been asked to make a presentation. You want to incorporate geography, pictures, text, and maybe even some audio into a presentation that you will be giving to the class. In this session, you will learn how to use Google Earth to create a virtual tour that incorporates location, text, images, and even your own podcast! Join us and learn how you can use Google Earth to help your students make global connections to their learning. To prepare for this workshop, please be sure that you have downloaded Google Earth. If your computer does not meet the minimum system requirements for running Google Earth, be sure to check out a conference computer.

Prerequisites: Working knowledge of Google Earth. If you haven't used Google Earth, or would like a refresher, please be sure to attend the one-hour session, "Google Earth Basics" on Sunday night.

To prepare for this workshop, please bring a list of topics that you would be interested in creating a short presentation. Topics should be something that somehow relates to places in our world (i.e. endangered species, tropical rain forests, community, geographic features, cities, states, etc.) and be something that you have taught in the past.

Using Free Online Tools to Encourage Student Content Creation, Collaboration, and Learning
St. Helens D: Patrick Crispin

In this fast-paced, three-hour workshop you'll learn how to use free online tools such as Adobe's Buzzword and PhotoShop Express, Google Network and Groups, and much more in a classroom environment. Particular attention will be spent to show you how to incorporate these tools into your lesson plans and encouraging your students to use these tools to create new content and collaborate more effectively.

XTreme Teamwork
Cascade C: Tim Chase

Student collaboration in your classroom has never been this easy! Kids these days don't need help knowing the importance of communication and collaboration -- that's what the MySpace generation does best! But to take these amazing tools into the classroom . . . how to make it safe? Where to start? This hands-on session introduces you to the best communication tools available and assists in developing strategies for using them in your own classroom. Teamwork Tools: Social Networking, Student Emails & Groups, Blogs, Wikis, Forums, and Cell Phones

WriteSite 4.0: Taking the Writing Process Online
Garden C: Nick Viani

Email, discussion groups, chat, blogs, wiki, and numerous (expensive) Learning Management Systems (i.e. Blackboard, WebCT, Desire2Learn) are all tools that support online teaching and learning. WriteSite is the inexpensive solution for managing content area writing in grades 3 through post high school. Pure and simple, WriteSite provides teachers and students a secure environment to post and discuss writing, to critically read and respond to writing, and to revise, publish and anthologize their writing via the Internet. You will leave with a free, fully-functioning, version of WriteSite that you may adapt to your writing program. Your students, their parents, and you will love it. Materials supporting WriteSite abound, and feedback from teachers drives each successive update. And because WriteSite supports any language using the “Roman” alphabet, teachers in ELL and foreign language programs are adapting WriteSite to their programs as well. Why not join us and be part of this powerful tool’s development?

All About Moodle
Gardens C: Diane Woodard

The blended learning environment provided to students through the use of Moodle allows us to provide a differentiated environment like never before. Who has the time to provide Video, Audio and Text based materials in order to meet the diverse learning styles of today's students? Moodle, along with web 2.0 provides the tools needed to easily produce this type of educational content which can be accessed 24/7. This session will show you how easy it is to provide content, collect student work and grade from any web based computer, anytime, anyplace!

Making Learning Relevant, and Applicable
Garden A: Marco Torres

Oral histories more than ever have a value in our classrooms NOW! Look at how documentaries and documentary-like productions are dominating our TV and movie theaters. The production of this media can help revolutionize your classroom. It can transform it into the most important classroom of your school-- if not the community.

Documentaries can be not only relevant, meaningful, and applicable to the academics of the classroom-- they can be some of the most important work you produce from your classroom. This workshop is geared to equip teachers on how to organize, manage, and support a documentary studio of the highest standard.

Powerful Ingredients for Digitally Interactive Learning
Garden B: Wesley Fryer

Good teaching is similar in many ways to good cooking. Recipes are helpful, but master cooks often modify those to meet different needs and situations. The same is true for teachers. If we extend this analogy of cooking to teaching and learning in a web 2.0 world, what are the best "ingredients" to use as we help both teachers and students learn to be more effective, safe, and powerful communicators in our flat world? In this working session we will focus on six key ingredients: del.icio.us social bookmarks, Flickr photo sharing, VoiceThread digital storytelling, collaborative writing tools, websites for phone recording as well as SMS polling, and videoconferencing. Cooking can be intimidating for novices, but richly rewarding. Let's learn to cook up some gourmet learning with some powerful (and free) web 2.0 tools!