I was looking at the vendors and came across odyssey ware, they are a provider for online curriculum and development for students. Daniel Dill and I had spoke at the conference last year so it was nice to see him again. We discussed Odysseyware and its potential uses, I Like their offerings and the ability to offer multiple elective courses as a single teacher and the quality of their presentations. My main problem with the product is the price, last year for implementation and training I was quoted over $3k just not including the cost of any courses for students. I had discussed receiving a quote for the new plan that costs less and breaks up the cost over 3 years but Dan failed to follow up with me, as my spending requests for Perkins were due the Wednesday after the conference.
I thoroughly enjoyed Laura's presentation on using google calendar for lesson plans. It seems I have found an easier solution than what I had been using prior, in the past I have been notorious for writing skeleton plans. Laura gave the detail on how to easily create an outline of your lesson in a form that is viewable for your students as well as admin and parents alike. I think the greatest selling point is being able to eliminate the age old question of "what did I miss yesterday?" Also the ease of being able to move lessons and copy duplicates from one year to another. Laura is a high energy presenter and also has an excellent protocol in her classes with badge systems to motivate students to achieve at high levels. I have been working a little with the idea and seeing how I can create a system incorporating this as I have been using google classroom this year in the classroom with great success.
This session was a mixed bag for me, I expected coming in from the description to learn about how to use new web based tools, however I was extremely dissapointed...
The session began with a dismal explanation of why and what to use that rivaled the traditional death by powerpoint, however in this session everything was dictated verbatim from Kristin's webpage. The general tone of the presentation was I don't like [insert website builder name here] but I do like weebly. While I agree on liking weebly there are multiple other site builders out there that are just as good. Like anything else beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder (and producer of the website), the people in the audience were asking questions because many needed to use google sites as mandated by their district. Kristin's answer was often "you can't do that on google sites" Having used google sites in the past running through my head was "Um, yes you can." Not wanting to be a contrarian I bit my tongue and used the time from the session to improve on my website, which is the one you are currently on. Here are some of the things I added during the 2 hour session
All in all the presentation itself I found to be lackluster, however worktime is always good. The session just was not what I expected. |