November Learning: Expanding the Boundaries of Learning

Lee Kolbert

About Lee Kolbert
District Technology Program Specialist, Palm Beach County, FL

Lee Kolbert has been an educator in Palm Beach County, FL for 25 years. She spent 20 years as an elementary school teacher and the last five as a district technology program specialist. Her primary focus is engaging teachers in new conversations to help them take that next step towards technology integration. Also a blogger and social network freak, Lee loves everything Web 2.0. Lee co-hosts a local TV show, PalmBreeze CAFÉ. Her segments, appropriately titled “Web 2.0 Sites of The Week” focus on the community as well as the classroom. Lee invites you to join her in conversation, here at BLC, as well as ubiquitously via her digital footprints:

Blog: http://macmomma.blogspot.com
PalmBreezeCAFE: http://palmbreezeutube.notlong.com
Twitter: TeachaKidd
Plurk: TeachaKidd
FaceBook: Lee Kolbert
Skype: TeachaKidd
Delicious: TeachaKidd

Main Session Workshops

VoiceThread; Leaving Your Voice and Beyond!

The Internet has progressed far beyond what we’ve been calling the “Read/Write Web.” Most of the advanced applications now have interactive features that are sure to engage your students! VoiceThread is a free Web 2.0 application that allows users to have web-based conversations around digital media using text, a video camera, microphone or even a telephone! In this session, see some examples of elementary classes’ VoiceThread projects that include collaborative global learning. Discussion will include how-to, classroom management, social networking and parental permission.

This session is suitable for all grade levels. I will show 1st and 5th grade level examples.

“Please Hold While You Connect Yourself To Your PLN”

Thanks to the fast changing pace of the tools on the Internet, learners are taking control of their learning environment for the first time in history. As teachers, we can now choose when and from whom we want to learn. Social networks can be synchronous or asynchronous and all allow us to connect with each other. In this session, we’ll discuss some of those tools and ways to reach out and build our own Personal Learning Network environments.

Can You Show Me a “Standard” Student? Teaching to the Standards, When Our Kids Are Anything But Standard

You have standards to teach and you have your standard teaching tools yet your students are anything but standard. Your students need to show gains so come and learn a few new things to meet their individual needs; like how to get them writing with comic creators. Teach study skills with an online/social list maker and social bookmarking. Teach your kids to think globally with some amazingly easy and free tools. Together we’ll explore 10+ free online tools you can use in your classroom tomorrow. Learn about video conversion tools, comic creators, online list makers, video-creating software, social bookmarking, web polls and more. Some of these you can use with your cell phone!