OTEN Conference

I attended the Oregon Technology in Education Network (OTEN) conference in early October hosted by Willamette University. It was a good conference for me to attend; I have been a bit of a Luddite regarding technology during the past decade and a bit of a skeptic of the ways technology can be useful in the classroom. But I was surprised to hear some of the statistics cited by the introductory speaker, Joe Morelock with Canby School District. Morelock showed data that indicates that the use of technology such as iPads in classrooms strongly has contributed to an increase in test scores and reduced the achievement gap among students.

The first workshop I attended focused on using technology games to facilitate learning. One example was an iPad game called "Where's Mommy" that can be modified by teachers to focus on a specific subject or topic. The program places pictures in a grid, and each picture can be assigned an audio file that prompts matching the audio clue with the picture. I never thought about modifying available applications for use in the classroom, and this was a more engaging way for students to learn and retain knowledge than rote memorization.

The second workshop I attended provided various ways to teach moon phases and astronomy to students in Oregon, which is valuable considering that the vast majority of Oregon's school year is under cloud cover. The program the instructor introduced is called Stellarium, and I LOVE IT. It's free to download and allows students to track the motion and phases of the moon interactively. It allows users to change time and direction faced to see what background stars fill the sky, and this can be adjusted to show background stars night and during the day, and show the planets and moon. As an amateur astronomer, I was super excited to learn about this software and share it with my students.