Monday at Confratute

The first full day at Confratute started with a keynote address by Joe Renzulli and Sally Reis.  Renzulli has always been kind of an idol of mine- OMG does that sound geeky or what?- so it was quite a thrill to hear him.

My first session was called "Technology Untangled"  The presenter, Brian Housand, will be sharing different web tools this week.  Today we learned about Google Docs, Dropbox and Weebly.  I have used Google Docs to share documents but I didn't realize how useful it could be for collaboration and creating documents as well.  We learned about using it for creating a survey.  The information collected is automatically stored as a spreadsheet.  I'm thinking it would be a great way to collect information from parents this fall.  My team and I use Dropbox a lot to share teaching activities.  I love it because I have access to my documents from any computer.  Since I am considering blogging with my class next year, I will definitely check into Weebly.

This evening I attended a forum on Google. I need to go back and review my notes because they  presented a lot in short period of time.  I was intrigued by something called Search Story but there wasn't really time to play with it.  My husband already thinks I spend too much time on the computer- wait till I get home and start playing with all of these new tools!

Our suite mates are from Nova Scotia, Canada.  It is so cool to hear about how things are done in another country. Plus, they are great partyers- I tagged along with one of my suitemates and some other Canadians she met up with.  I haven't danced like that in years!  This is truly an awesome experience!