General Participant Information

Thank you for registering for Bill Ferriter's two-day workshop on Teaching the iGeneration.  There is no doubt that our time together is going to be full of the kinds of learning and networking that leaves most educators completely jazzed.  In order to take full advantage of our time together, please consider the following suggestions.

Signing Up for Services in Advance

During the course of our workshop, we'll be looking at how digital tools and services can be used to support the teaching and learning of essential skills like communication, collaboration, persuasion and information management.  Specifically, we'll be using the following services:

Diigo is one of the most popular social bookmarking and shared annotation resources available to classroom teachers.  It is an essential tool for managing information effectively in the 21st Century.  Sign up for a free Diigo Educator's account---which can take a few days to process---by visiting this link. 

Animoto is an incredibly simple video editing tool that allows teachers and students to create engaging visual content without needing any technical skill.  More importantly, Animoto provides users with a comprehensive collection of Creative Commons music to add to their videos---eliminating the need for extensive searching when adding soundtracks to final products.  Sign up for a free Animoto Educator account----which can take a few days to process----by visiting this link.

PBWorks---the service being used to house this online warehouse of information for Bill Ferriter's Teaching the iGeneration workshop---is one of the most polished wiki services available to teachers and students.  What makes it particularly unique for elementary and middle school teachers is that users can easily create user accounts for their students without adding email addresses.  Sign up for a free PBWorks Educator account---which can take a few days to process---by visiting this link.

VoiceThread---session presenter Bill Ferriter's favorite digital service---allows teachers and students to engage in asynchronous conversations around a wide-variety of digital content.  Have a collection of provocative quotes you want students to think about?  Upload them to VoiceThread and start a conversation.  Have an interesting video or image that will spark conversation between your kids?  Upload them to VoiceThread and start a conversation.  Sign up for a free VoiceThread Educator account---which can take a few days to process----by visiting this link. 

Google -- besides being the world's most popular search engine, Google offers a wide-range of fantastic free tools that teachers and students can take advantage of.  Session presenter Bill Ferriter loves to use Google Drive -- which was originally called Google Docs -- to create shared documents and classroom surveys.  He is also a fan of Google Reader -- a tool that allows him to organize his online reading interests.  Using Google tools requires nothing more than a free Google account -- which you can sign up for here. 

While signing up for free educator's accounts in advance of our workshop is not required---you can always sign up for basic versions of each account on the day of the workshop----signing up in advance will save you time and allow you to truly focus on experimenting with each tool.

Bringing a Laptop Instead of a Tablet Computer

During the course of our workshop, you'll have the chance to experiment with a bunch of different digital tools and services.  You'll also have the opportunity to explore documents designed to structure meaningful learning experiences in your classroom and to fill out reflection forms designed to help you think through the challenges of teaching and learning in the 21st Century.  While all of this work can probably be done on tablet computers (iPads, Dell Slates, etc.), you may find it easier to have a full-sized laptop to work with. 

Thinking Carefully About One Unit You Currently Teach

One of the products that all participants will walk away with at the end of our two-day workshop is a digital project plan detailing the steps necessary for integrating technology into a current unit.  Consider thinking about which unit you'd like to design a digital project for in advance.  This might be a unit that you know you'll be teaching somewhere in the near future, a unit that you particularly enjoy teaching, or a unit that you've already tried to incorporate technology into.  You may even want to bring any existing materials for that unit to our workshop.  Doing so will allow you to take full advantage of the time that we have for project planning. 

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