CONASTA - Canberra 2012

Once again I'm heading over to CONASTA- (Australian Science Teachers Association). This year I will be facilitating two workshops "1:1 Computers in the Science Classroom" and "Free science Software and How to Use it in the Classroom" (workshop sessions A and C).

CONASTA is being held in Canberra this year so it will be cold

As always I will be drawing on my archive of blog entries to find those gems of applications and websites that make teaching with technology fun and engaging.

If you can think of a website, program or app that you think would be great to showcase please leave a comment below. Particularly if it is not on my blog at the moment.

My colleagues will also be presenting - Peter Niass is also doing 2 sessions on Monday and Matthew Burley is presenting with Jeff Stanger at the final sessions on Wednesday.

If you are coming to CONASTA I will be at Stands 1 & 2 in the exhibition hall and floating around during sessions so please come and say hi.

Time to catch up with a few things....

Image by Luke Redmond via Flickr

I feel like my feet have hit the ground for the first time this week. I was at the "Leading a Digital School" conference on the Gold Coast from Wednesday to Saturday - It was great but with presenting workshops, being on the stand and Co MC'ing the quiz night - I was exhausted by the time I got back to Perth... Thank goodness for my new iPhone for the six hour plane ride (thanks boss).

For one of my workshops / presentations I used a new web 2.0 tool called prezi - Prezi breaks the traditional slide based presentation model and is more based on a messy concept map with pathways to move through. So you can explore topics as they come up - or give it to people to explore themselves. Speaking of which - here is the one I used at the conference.

Our product line up has increased as well with an agreement with RM for both software and hardware - The coolest being the new Ed-e Robot. He certainly got a lot of attention at the conference and even danced at the quiz night on the main screen.

We also now have access to all the software the RM carry including podium - pod casting software simplified for primary students.

Last thing - echalk (the computer teachers listserv) has been buzzing about Greenfoot, a java programming environment for kids. I just had a look at it and it seems that I'm going to have to download and play with it because it looks really cool.

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IWB Conference - Sydney

Just a short note to let you know that I will be at the Australian IWB conference over the next couple of days. So if you are in Sydney and particularly near Waverly college feel free to pop on down. I will be presenting on each of the three days as well as running around like a madman helping people with TurningPoint. Iwill also be twittering (@halljackson) with my new iPhone or laptop so you can follow that - Now that will make me use it.

Image via Wikipedia