LCSS Media & Technology Showcase

I attended the annual LCSS Media & Technology Showcase yesterday and had a blast!  I was able to attend 3 sessions (well, I cheated and went to half of two, but shhhhh don’t tell) – podcasting, media festival and STAR Early Literacy. 

Melissa Roberts and Brittney Mobley of the LCSS Technology Office offered great ideas about podcasting.  Their hands-on workshop was a great deal of fun and I left feeling much more confident in using some of the free resources available to podcast. 

A session to promote the International Student Media Festival was offered by Deborah Hargroves.  Along with media festival tips and ideas, I learned of many free tools available for the 21st century classroom.  It will be so much fun sharing these programs with the teachers and students!  I just know we can utilize them in creating technology projects to submit to this years media festival.

STAR Early Literacy with Ellen Gadberry was the last session that I “sneaked” into and I certainly was glad I did!  I was so impressed with the program.  STAR Early Literacy is a web-based early literacy assessment tool that provides immediate feedback on the development of students' literacy skills.  I am extremely interested in this program for our kindergarten and possibly first graders who struggle with STAR testing.  Very informative session! 

Oh, but I haven’t told you the best part of that day (besides wearing jeans, of course)… I was a winner two times over!  Yes two times!  I won a NEO 2 from Renaissance Learning.  I am so excited!  I am going to put it to great use too!  It is going to travel each month to the classroom with the highest AR points AND testing accuracy at FLE.  How cool will that be for the kiddos?  I also won a book, In One Ear, Out the Other by Michael Dahl from Perma Bound Books.  (My friend Tara suggested I pick this book as my free gift… so, I haven’t actually read the book yet, but I’m sure it is GrEaT!) 

NEO 2

All in all, it was a great day!  Thanks Jaime for organizing the event!