MPTCA - My Sessions

All About Blogging - This was my first ever my double session.  While I enjoyed having longer than 75 minutes, 3 hours was just too long! 

Who is that?  And what is he eating?

We spent a good 2 hours establishing why teachers and students should blog, setting up an RSS reader

and subscribing to blogs.  We then tried out three blogging platforms (Posterous, KidBlogs, Blogger) and then set up our own.  No wonder everyone was exhausted!  Feel free to check out the session here and play around with some of the blogging platforms.  There are instructions, usernames and passwords to try each platform out. 

Technology Integration for Social Studies Div 3ish - This was my second double session and I think I had better pacing for this one!  The best part of this session, my junior high social teacher Mr. Yas attended!  My theme was Create, Collaborate and Critically Think.  However with what was happening in Japan, we went a little off course (teachable moment) as I showed my #japan twitter stream, Al Jazeera English and The Boston Picture as alternative ways to get current events.  The majority of the session you can find here.  I think I started off strong with creating a fake Facebook page and different ways to use audio.  We deviated slightly off course here and there, taking a looking at The Week in Rap and National Geographic Typical Person video.  I think that teachers walked away with some new ideas and had a fair amount of time to play with them.

All in all a most excellent teachers' convention!