February 2nd and 3rd I attended the Ohio eTech Technology Conference in Columbus. This anual conference draws over 9,000 teachers, tech coordinators, librarians, and administrators. I have attended this conference the last five years because it always gives me some new ideas to use in my classroom and also to share with other teachers.One new idea I will be exploring thanks to the conference is a server technology called Moodle. This new software suite allows teachers to create new ways to works with their students. Moodle is a web interface thatcombines a teacher's homepage for their classes with an array of web tools that interact with students. This includes a gradebook, a web quest template, a forum maker, a wiki maker, an online test generator, and an easy method for share files with students. And this is just a sampling of what this system can offer to teachers. I like the fact that it is all organized with one place.
I also discover a number of new web sites that I can use in the classroom. Weebly.com is one new site I have discovered. Students can create their own web pages through this site. It is very user friendly. I have added several new titles to books I want to read that deal with technology. These titles include The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman.
