Tech Forum - Insight & Innovation for Technology Leaders @ Chicago

Chanced upon this forum online (from one of those online subscription) with some sessions that are available via LiveStream (Interesting - for those who aren't able to attend 'physically' but still 'participate' online, at least, to 'attend' some of the pre-identified popular sessions.

Here's one of them, on "Collaboration and the Common Core", which is a 'showcase' of how technology is incorporated into the Common Core curriculum delivery 

techlearning on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

The first speaker talked about "Infusing the Arts in Common Core with Creativity" by Carol Broos.
Several pieces of students' work were showcased, e.g. the "Whip Your Hair" project, "Wedding" and "Switch 2". These were original students' work which are pretty interesting; unfortunately, because the rationale/ intended curriculum objective of the activity was not shared clearly, then it came as just an "activity" (that's fun for the kids).

• http://musictechie.pbworks.com/w/page/60850736/Infusing%20the%20Arts%20in%20the%20Common%20Core

Key takeaways come from the last 2 slides on the advice on "Resources" - the emphasis is on creation. Basically, it's about getting children to create their own stuff, of course, that's where the sense of satisfaction comes; I guess, more importantly, it addresses another concern that many educators - Copyright. These are the pointers:

• Take your own pictures
• Compose your own music
• Create your own movie
• Draw your own logo

The 2nd presentation focused on projects carried out in a 1-to-1 iPad classroom - Language Arts, presented by a teacher and librarian. Though some of these project ideas seemed familiar, but some interesting ideas generated on how these projects were 'showcased' to a larger audience (i.e. student community). I think a couple of these could be interesting for us to try in our classrooms, too!

I like the part where students write and read their own stories to share. Indeed, this is something which I thought of for the MRL programme, where students can pen down reviews of stories they write and share. That would be interesting and more importantly, a good exercise for the students - to be able to summarise their reading succinctly, which requires them to put in practice their writing skills. The 'additional' idea I gathered from this sharing would be the audio part, which would be pretty nice - allowing one to "Listen on the Move".  Cool, isn't it?

The third team started off with the TPACK framework which is the background for the presentation, and served as a guide on how the projects (shared) are designed and executed.

• http://www.techlearning.com/portals/0/Marcotte_et-al.pdf

• The first one basically tapped on web information, although the presenter highlighted that "QR Code" is the technology used. Hm... I don't quite agree that it's the technology, it's not something that refrain from getting students reading "pages of text" that the presenter shared, but it's just a "productivity tool" that allows one to just scan and be brought to the website directly (without having the need to the key in the URL). Hm... it's more like a sharing on how "QR Code" is being used to save time. 
• A interdisciplinary project - marrying Spanish & Music
• Technology enriched lesson with language - handling Informational text - in terms of technology used - A mash of GoogleApps to support online collaboration; and activity is designed such that students take the lead in the creation and how to go about demonstrating their ability to bring in a range of tools (appropriate application) in the course of accomplishing the work. Hm... Hazy in terms of the work carried out in the classroom; but I think it's possible. It's "hazy" probably because the presenter has not quite talk about the "how to".