Teaching With Technology - NYSAIS 2012

We just attended the 2012 NYSAIS Teaching With Technology Conference in New York. The New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS) holds this event annually to promote the practices of teachers using technology in their classrooms. This year, over 300 dedicated educators were in attendance, and many gave up time during their vacations to do so. The workshops assembled for the day provided a wealth of ideas to empower our students with engaging ways to learn using technology. It comes as no surprise that many of us wish we had another day to learn even more.

Source: Staples

Workshops on iPads in the classroom were particularly useful, since schools have, or are looking to set up, 1:1 programs. It was good to hear from others about planning such a program and about some of the problems they incurred with the deployment that in hindsight could have been avoided. Other workshops we found particularly valuable focused on shifting the classroom to the cloud, the impact of video streaming on learning, and a host of web 2.0 applications.

Source: ASIDE Student Infographics

Special thanks to the collegial crowd who attended our session on Designing Information: Infographics as Literacy. The thoughtful exchange of ideas and questions made for an enriching discussion. The infographic examples used in the presentation, as well as hundreds more, are available on this blog. We’ve arranged them by subject for easy accessibility, and our resources page contains the many available links for creating original graphics with students. All skill tips and curriculum tools are posted as well.

A special thanks to everyone on the NYSAIS TWT Committee for making this a great conference. If you were not able to attend, check out the Twitter hashtag #twt2012 to find out more.