Click on the link above to view 4 wonderful photos of students at the fair and read interviews with students, teachers and those who made the fair possible.
TWITTER at the Fair: View the multiple tweets for all three of the fairs by following the #itecfair hashtag
On Friday, we hosted the ITEC Student Technology Fair at the University of Northern Iowa. ITEC is theIowa Technology and Education Connection organization for teachers who are interested in educational technology. Every year we sponsor 3 student technology fairs across the state: Ames, Sioux City and Cedar Falls. These student technology fairs provide a venue for students from 3rd - 12th grade to share what they have been doing with technology. It's not about the technology but it's about what students can achieve and explore with these tools.
This year's Cedar Falls fair was incredible. The quality of work was beyond anything that I have ever seen at our fairs. The students ranged from 8 to 18 years old. They displayed imagination and innovation that exceeded past years' fairs. Blue and Red ribbons are awarded, but Purple Ribbons are presented to exceptional projects that "stand out" from the rest. The Purple Ribbon award winners are invited to present their projects at our October ITEC conference in Des Moines. Purple Ribbons were awarded to 5 of the 46 projects displayed. This is a higher ratio than ever before. The projects included:
A team of 13 year olds from the Blessed Maria Assunta Pallotta Middle School (in Waterloo) who had learned the Python programming language on their own and created an anti-abduction program. The intent was to create a program for a safety button that would send GPS coordinates to a parent if a child gets in trouble and presses the button. They were already working with law enforcement to develop this project.
Students from Metro Alternative High School in Cedar Rapids who were using CNC programming to run a mill to create molds for making candy bars advertising the school. They had just begun another project where they were created molded soap that said "Wash Away Stereotypes."
Students from Grinnell High School who had "hard coded" a website entitled Permissions Impossible which worked as an online dictionary describing app permissions.
A 16-year "George Lucas" from Maquoketa High School who uses the Adobe Creative Suite to create an amazing video, Technology in School.
Beyond that, we had students who were creating solar systems, writing music, developing mathematical games, exploring MineCraft, connecting with President Obama, running robots, designing homes, animating book reports, and informing others about cancer.
It was an extraordinary fair with extraordinary projects by extraordinary people.
I hope that you can attend our fair next year. It will be in early April. Do your students get an opportunity to participate in a Student Technology Fair such as this? Z
This 20-minute video is the ultimate instructional Skype video. It begins with introducing Skype and telling you how to get online. She then provides a format for connecting with other classrooms, authors, and experts from around the world. This was enlightening. She wasn't just providing rules, sharing her proven methods along with examples of connections that she and her students had made around the world. AND she has created it in both English and Spanish.
Silvia Tolisano has an international project, Around the World with 80 Schools. I must admit that I don't know much about this yet because I just signed up to join the wiki and learn more about the project. I will definitely blog about this later.
I was most impressed by the quality of the informative and instructional video. Ms. Tolisano appears to have used the digital storytelling process where she recorded the narrative first and then found visuals to accompany them. I especially liked what appeared to be original photos where she posed a wooden doll to illustrate a number of ideas that she was discussing.
I am quite pleased to have found Silvia Tolisano and look forward to following her projects.
What have you found to support using Skype in your classroom?
