Tuesday, May 11, 2010

MACE 2010 Best of the Best

 I attended the Mid-America Association for Computers in Education (MACE) conference in Manhattan, KS in March (I know it has been a crazy couple of months...don't ask) and was inundated with resources. The best part about this conference is that the instructors are mainly classroom teachers who are sharing what worked for them on their quests to integrate technology into the curriculum. I learned a lot at the day and a half conference and want to share the highlights with you.

The first resource I want to share with you is Kansas Memory. This site is full of primary sources from Kansas History. It is fairly easy to search and find great documents, images and even some video from Kansas. While this is a resource geared toward 7th-12 grade standards (those are tied into the site as well), the 4th grade/5th grade teacher in me thinks they could be used with that age range as well they just need a little more guidance. The only thing I would change about this site would be the ability to sign students up under a teacher account (not able to do that for now).

The second resource I want to share is Worth 1000. This site has tons of photos that have been altered in some way. When I first saw this site I thought, oh it would be great to teach students that not everything they see on the web is real because all of these photos are altered in some way. I also thought, what a cool site for a writing activity to get students excited about writing. I also thought it could be used as a good brain break!

The third resource I want to share is Lego Avatar Creator. I like this creator because students can create their own avatar for different web2.0 tools that they might want to use without sharing their real picture online. I thought, this would be a cool one to use with VoiceThread. In our district we can't allow students to have their own accounts but teachers can manage and create ones for them so this would be a way for them to be identified.

There are tons more resources from MACE 2010, so check them out on my Delicious account at http://delicious.com/jgridley/MACE10 HAVE FUN!!!