I'm finally getting some time to go through all the things I learned at ISTE11 and start sharing things.

One session that was very informative and fun was "Extreme Web 2.0 Makeover" by Steve Dembo. Steve is a member of the Discovery Education team and is a great presenter. He started the session out by letting us know that it was mainly for newbies. I thought this was classy of him to give people a heads up. However, I don't consider myself an edtech newbie at all, but I learned a lot from this session.

Steve is very energetic, humorous, and knowledgeable. His sessions are always great.

Here is the link to Steve's presentation: tinyurl.com/istemakeover  You can also reach Steve at Teach42.com.

Steve had a slide show to use (see above) but ended up making the session more interactive and took questions from the audience and showed them different tools and ways to use them in school. He even did a podcast of the session.

Here are some of the things I learned about in the session:

QR Codes - he showed everyone how to create their own QR codes using delivr.com. QR Codes are a type of barcode that can be read by most smartphones. I'm going to use them around my classsroom and school as ways for people to find more info when reading a memo or poster. They can also be used on name tags and even as a treasure hunt activity.

ipadio.com - always you to create podcasts using your phone and then create direct links or even embed them. Easy and free so you can have your students use it to create podcasts. People can even listen live.

Ustream.TV - video podcast creation that can be embedded in a site or blog and also viewed live.

Livestream.com - advanced video podcasts and video streaming service. Free and fee versions. Can also use Chat with it for interaction with viewers and questions and answers.

Keepvid.com - download videos from sites, including YouTube. There is a bookmarklet available for most browsers too. Great way to use YouTube videos in class if it's blocked at your school. Download them at home first.

Quietube - show YouTube videos without the ads and suggestions. Just copy the URL of the video into Quietube. There is also a bookmarklet available.

Posterous.com - super easy, simple blogging. Email to post@posterous.com with a subject and content and it will post it. It will recognize your email and post it to your account. The blogs are public. This is a great way to do quick and easy blogs.


He talked about some other great things. I suggest viewing his presentation (above) because he did not follow it in the session because the audience had other questions. I love the fact that he decided to run with what the audience was asking instead of sticking to his plan. His plan was still available for us to look at, but what he did was much more timely and what we wanted.

Follow Steve on Twitter too: @teach42