KS Educational Technology Conference

This year’s Ed Tech Conference theme was Hana Pono “to work with purpose/passion.” The passion was definitely evident in some sessions I attended. These presenters remind us that we need to choose what we are passionate about and to take action on it. We all too often get inspired then return to our normal life as we let our inspirations fade away. Our passions don’t need to change the world they just need to change ourselves. Here are a couple presenters whose passions have brought positive change to themselves and others.

The Green Bronx Machine
The opening keynote speaker this year was Stephen Ritz a South Bronx teacher/administrator who gave a motivating, high energy and inspirational talk on the Green Bronx Machine. The Green Bronx Machine is an organization founded by Stephen and his students who focus on healthy eating, growing their own vegetables to reach academic success. The Green Bronx Machine is an inspirational story that started out as an after school program and now has evolved into an award winning K-12+ model that is fully integrated into core curriculum. In addition to academic success their students and the Bronx community also benefit through job creation, community beautification, increased health and fresh vegetables.

Save the Honu
Katelyn Hirata is a six year old Kindergarten student whose was inspired to save the Honu “Turtles” from reading a National Geographic article. Her presentation reflected the depth of her passions through her project-based experiences, presentations, fund raising efforts and visiting real turtles. I think the Ed Tech Conference should have more child presenters like Katelyn that demonstrate not only technology integration, but their passions as well.

Comments

Geotagging

A "wouldn't it be nice" idea that's been around a while is the ability to tag a map with images that are linked to more information about the site. Kelly C suggested it as a way for students to share knowledge about a cultural/historic site or the geographic area they live in with classmates. (right, no addresses!) There are now cameras and even storage media that embed latitude and longitude into images as they are shot. But you don't need fancy new toys to do this. I tried Flickr's geotagging map and it's fun and supereasy. Want to try it? Log in to Flickr http://www.flickr.com Sign in as " techedine " password " wist101 " yea, corny. Click the " You " tab then the " Your Photostream > Map " or Organize > Your Map links. Click the Satellite link in the upper right. Cool view! (you may need Google Satellite downloaded). Images along the bottom of the screen with colored dots have already been droppe...

Avatar Chat

Aloha all, Here's my o wau topic for this week. We all know the power of the Avatar and their popularity with our learners from our A`o Makua courses and I know we have discussed ways to incorporate them into our `Ike Hawai`i classes as well. Well, I can't take credit for finding this resource. Our resident Avatar expert a.k.a. Christy told me to check it out because Avatars can now chat. So please join me in finding out what other engaging and motivating feats these amazing characters can do to help us provide meaningful learning experiences for all our students. You can read about OddCast and their AvatarSpace or go to their Web site and test out some of these features. I'm hoping that this may provide us with a motivating way to get students, in both programs, to participate in some cooperative learning and sharing. Let me know what you think and if you feel this would be a valuable application to use. Mahalo - look forward to reading your responses! Kelly

Zoho Creator

I thought I’d share this web application I came across in my quest to find a relatively simple app to help us manage our mentoring data in the DL Orientation. Our specific needs were that it be a free online database, password protected, had the capability of rapid form development without too much programming knowledge and was easy for the end user to use. The application that met these requirements was Zoho Creator ( http://www.zohocreator.com/ ) a part of a suite of online applications including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, wikis, organizers and more. What’s great about Zoho Creator is that they have an online repository of applications already developed that you can download to your account and use for free. Initially, I tried some of these applications, but it was overkill for our needs. Zoho Creator can do a lot if you know programming and they have a pay model where it allows you more flexibility and features. I think Zoho Creator would be a useful tool for both...

Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

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