Holiday Conference

I was lucky enough to be able to attend 2 days worth of professional developement in Auckland over the Term One holidays.
Day One was a literacy course with the keynote being Murray Gadd.  As you can imagine this was a motivating day.  Included in the workshops was a tutorial about Google Docs and how to utilise this in the classroom  A great resource for seniors and editing.
Day Two was 'Mobile Devices in the Classroom' I was super excited about this day.  Workshops were run by teachers, as they say some teachers should just teach.  Presenting is a skill and you can see why the good ones get paid the big bucks.  Was a sharing session about how classroom teachers utilise this technology.

I tryed to get around to as many as I could
This is livesketch it is great.  Children can draw with a pen or their finger, teaches them about shading.  The slower you draw the darker it goes.
There are some examples of trees that my class did on my blog
http://room9rockets.blogspot.co.nz/


We looked at Draw free this lets you draw pictures, sketchs etc and then you

link into popplet (lite) you don't need the full version.  Great for big book, reading follow ups or working as a group on presenting information.


There were a number of special needs apps
  This was a very american sounding app, but has a number of screens for those children who can't talk.  They can push an icon and it say " I am Hungry" "Juice please"







 This is an app that lists all the apps that people use that have autism, so gives a bit more focus for this special need.