Workshops & Presentations

Sharing is Caring...So I Share
As a fifth grade teacher, Tony Vincent learned the power of online publishing when his students posted book reviews on Amazon.com twelve years ago. Since then Tony and his students have shared writing, art, audio, and video on the Web. Today as an educational technology consultant, Tony uses free sites like Blogger, PBworks, SlideShare, TeacherTube, Delicious, and Twitter to share online resources, lesson ideas, podcasts, instructional videos, computer tips, and more.

Find out specifically what Tony shares on the web and why. Learn the power of discovering other educators online and what they have to share. You will not only be motivated to stay dialed into the latest and greatest and what works in education and technology, but you’ll be inspired to share what you have to offer!

Cloudy with a Strong Chance of Learning

Nowadays much of what we do can be created and stored on the web. Techies call this cloud computing, and it requires only a web browser and internet. Cloud computing offers an affordable way to engage students in learning. Find out about some new and favorite web-based tools that you'll be excited to use in the classroom

21 Strategies, Ideas, and Tips to Reach 21st Century Learners
It's certainly a challenge to engage today's students. Learning theory shows that one of the keys to successful learning is engagement. Using Schlechty's "8 Qualities of Engagement" as a framework, Tony Vincent outlines 21 technology tools educators can use to increase authentic engagement. Learn ways to engage and motivate learners using freely available tools. Examples include polling students, illustrating concepts with crazy cartoons, creating jazzy slide shows, and touring the coolest sites the web has to offer.

Then and Now
A lot has certainly changed in the last few years in technology. Laptops used to cost big bucks, but today ultra-portable and cheap laptops can be had for $200. Websites are more interactive and fully encourage participation. There's little need to know HTML as online services now allow easy and instant publishing. Some software no longer has to be purchased and installed because we can do the same tasks online for free. iPods are physically smaller but storage capacity and capabilities have greatly increased. The pace of change only seems to be increasing. Let's examine changes in technology and society so that we can leverage these exciting trends in education.

10 Things You Should to Know About Twitter
Believe it or not, Twitter can be a valuable learning tool for educators. However, lots of people admit to "not getting" Twitter. As a result, according to Nielsen 60% of U.S. Twitter users don't return to Twitter after a month. Twitter's value to busy teachers isn't apparent and many ask why they would bother with Twitter. To help you understand and use Twitter effectively, learn about the 10 things you should know to get you started using Twitter.

It is Better to Give Than Receive
“Share unto others as you'd have them share unto you.” You’ve taken the time to put together some great slide shows, lesson plans, and videos. It only makes sense to share them with others! There are hundreds of websites that offer users a place to share what they create with others on the web. These sites end up being great repositories of media for educators to learn from and use as examples. Discover which websites have the best treasure for for educators and the easiest to use. Categories include Videos, Writing, Photos, Slide Shows, Files, Bookmarks, and Lesson Plans.

Radio for Kids, by Kids
The real power of podcasting comes from the creation of the audio programs that are posted online for a global audience. Learn about the making of two amazing podcasts: Radio WillowWeb and Our City. Gain valuable instructional strategies, recording tips, and useful techniques for creating podcasts with students.

Do So Much with an iPod touch
iPod touch is much more than a music player! It can play videos downloaded from the Internet. It can display photos and images, including PowerPoint slides. iPod touch can access any website, and there are sites specially made for the device. Best of all, there are hundreds of software applications that can help teachers and students stay organized, be creative, and study. Learn about all of this along with tips and tricks for using iPod touch in education.

So Appy Together!

iPod touches and iPhones are finding their ways into students' and teachers' hands. There are good reasons these devices are popular: tens of thousands of useful software applications in the App Store. Get hands-on time with an iPod touch as Tony Vincent shares terrific apps for learning and teaching. 

The Personal Productivity Wiki
Learn about two concepts at once in this session! The first topic is productivity. As a busy school leader, you receive dozens of emails a day, deal with scheduling meetings, and have an endless to do list. Never fear! There are tools and strategies to help you keep your head above water. You'll learn about the tools and strategies through a wiki. A wiki is a website that anyone can edit and you'll see how reading from and contributing to a wiki can help learners dive into a topic. In this case, your topic is personal productivity.

Fun and Educational: Manipulating Digital Images
Turn any image into an online jigsaw puzzle. Put a photo of a student into a reading poster. Place your class on the cover of a magazine. Change a photograph into a cartoon drawing. Add picture frames and text to field trip photos. Learn how to do all this and more using free online tools.

I Didn’t Know You Could Do That With an iPod!
iPods are showing up in classrooms as a motivating learning tool. Sure, you know about audio and video on iPods, but there is much more iPods have to offer. Go beyond simple audio and video and use iPods as motivating learning tools. Learn about interactive texts, RSS feeds, flash cards, quizzes, and more on iPods with click wheels.

Awe Your Audience: Tony's Tips
Wow your fellow teachers with compelling presentation techniques! Tony Vincent shares his insights on making memorable and effective presentations. He covers his presentation philosophy, Keynote and/or PowerPoint software features, slide design, handout advice, and much more. You'll leave empowered and excited to make your next presentation!

Meet the Mobile Web
The Mobile Internet is the term for websites and services that are formatted for the smaller screens of mobile devices, like cell phones and handhelds. There are a growing number of tools to make the Mobile Internet a friendlier place. Learn about the Web on handheld devices, including research, blogs, news feeds, and bookmarks. You will even discover the options for creating homepages for the mobile web.

Our City Podcast: Learn About Places from the Kids Who Live There
Our City Podcast invites kids from around the world to submit episodes about the places they live. With over 50 episodes, Our City Podcast has dozens episodes from all over North America. Explore ways to use Our City Podcast in classrooms. Also learn about preparing a class to produce their very own episode about their own city.

Audio Recording, Mixing, & Editing 101
With today’s computers, it is easy to record voices, edit mistakes, rearrange content, add sound effects or music, and export as an MP3 file. Producing audio content can be a powerful motivator, and the software is free. The session focuses on Audacity, free software for Mac and Windows users.

Ten Tools for Teachers
Sure, as a professional you use your computer for email and web searching. But, there's so much more available online that educators absolutely love! Tony Vincent shares ten of his favorite resources. Learn about widgets for your website, software to capture images and video, social bookmarking, customized start pages, and more. Best of all, each of the ten tools are free of charge so you can get to using them right away!

Listen Up, Teachers!
There are over 30,000 podcasts just waiting to be listened to. It’s good news that many of these free audio programs are made especially for educators. Learn about finding, subscribing, and listening to podcasts for professional development. Get great ideas for lessons, learn about new technologies, and think critically about your profession through podcasts.

What It’s All About: Blogs & RSS
Blogs are easy-to-update websites. Gone are the days of complicated HTML editors and uploading. Teachers and students are keeping blogs for posting assignments, reflecting on lessons, and connecting with one another. Blogs use the magic of Really Simple Syndication to make their content available in a variety of forms and websites. Learn how real educators and students use blogs and RSS for learning!

Terrific Macintosh Tips for Teachers
Mac OS X is becoming more and more popular. It is full of useful features, many you probably don't know about. Learn about useful keyboard shortcuts, zooming in on the screen, adjusting the volume, grabbing screenshots, making zip files, and many more tip and tricks educators will find extremely useful.

GIMP: Free Alternative to Photoshop

You've heard of Photoshop--it's that expensive professional image-editing and graphics creation software. There's a free alternative called GIMP for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. Discover how powerful and useful GIMP can be by working hands-on with image retouching, graphics creation, and animations for slideshows, handouts, and websites.

Learning in Hand: iPods
Spend a day with your iPod in this hands-on workshop. Besides learning about audio and video on iPods, you'll learn about so many other educational uses for iPods, including viewing notes, recording voice memos, accessing news feeds, creating interactive study aids, and much more.

Doing It Without Software: Web Applications
There are many tasks that used to require software that you can now do from inside of your Web browser. Web applications are great for students and teachers because they are free and you won’t install software. Learn about creating jazzy slide shows, resizing images, animating photos, and more!

Podcasting
Anyone can publish a podcast nowadays, so why aren’t you? Learn from an experienced podcaster about this wonderful form of communication. With Radio WillowWeb and Our City Podcast as guides, Tony shares from his experiences from podcasting with students. Working together, the group will create a sample podcast episode while learning valuable tips and techniques along the way. You’ll leave energized to start your very own podcast!

Engage Students and Meet Standards with Project Based Learning
The key to learning is engagement and Project Based Learning is a great way to engage students. Not only do projects motivate students because they use technology, but they also lend themselves to student voice and choice. This workshop is especially for teachers whose classrooms provide 1:1 student computers (like netbooks/mini laptops in particular). Participants learn the basics of Project Based Learning while exploring the role of technology in planning, researching, and presenting projects. Participants learn to do the following and more:

1. •Why use Project Based Learning.
   

2. •How to craft effective driving questions.
   

3. •Characteristics of effective projects.
   

4. •Tips for making effective slide shows (with OpenOffice Impress, PowerPoint, or Keynote)
   

5. •Online resources for making rubrics.
   

6. •Instruction on creating audio presentations with music and sound effects (with Audacity)
   

7. •Tips for making better video presentations (with Movie Maker or iMovie)
   

8. •Tips for teaching technology skills to students.
   

Come on Down! Game Shows in the Classroom Make reviewing curriculum engaging when you host game shows in your classroom! You can find PowerPoint templates for popular game shows online, like Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader, Jeopardy, Hollywood Squares, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Many of these templates even come with music and sound effects. After playing some game shows, participants learn to create and customize PowerPoint templates for use in their classrooms.

Gold Rush: Dozens of Free Web 2.0 Tools for Schools

Some call it Web 2.0, others call it the Read/Write Web or Participatory Web. After this workshop, you'll call it a gold mine!  Tony Vincent has struck online gold and wants to tell you where to find it and what can be done with it. This workshop is packed with examples from the Web's next generation of resources and tools. You'll learn to do all of the following and more:

1. •Effortlessly create hip slide shows.
   

2. •Instantly share text, photos and videos.
   

3. •Jazz up your website.
   

4. •Enhance and animate an image.
   

5. •Poll students.
   

6. •Construct a site for collaboration.
   

7. •Connect personally and professionally with other educators.
   

8. •Illustrate concepts with crazy cartoons.
   

9. •Bookmark, organize, and annotate webpages.
   

10. •Engage your students with the coolest sites the web has to offer.
    

Participants in this two-day workshop will start a blog, contribute to a wiki, join a social network, and explore useful online software. It might be hard to believe that all of these valuable treasures are free of charge, but it's true! In addition to lots of hands-on activities, you will engage in important discussions about online safety, ethics, and copyright. With such great booty for teaching and learning, you might not be able to wait use these cool tools in the classroom!

You’ll Love Wikis: Basics of Wiki Creation and Use
Teachers love wikis because they are websites that are quick to set up and easy to maintain. Students love wikis because they facilitate collaboration and online publishing. Participants in this session will set up a free Wikispaces site and learn how to add pages, hyperlinks, images and video

Become a Blogger
A blog is a website that is easy to update. No longer do students or educators need to know HTML or complicated software to have a presence on the Web. Learn about why blogs are such incredible tools for teaching and learning, read example blogs, and start your very own!

Make Marvelous Movies
Bring your digital camcorder if you’ve got one and let’s make a movie! Sure, software like iMovie makes it easy to put together a video. However, there are techniques you can use to make ordinary movies spectacular. Learn about tips and tricks for helping students memorize lines, improving sound quality, changing camera angles, and much more.

Web Widgets: Interactive & Self-Updating
Web widgets can bring new life to a classroom site. Web widgets are little bits of code you embed into a webpage or blog. Once a widget is placed on a page, it can grab updated information or display interactive content. Learn about places to find, customize, and use free Web widgets that display their information right on your own page. Examples include word of the day, daily riddles, educational videos, audio files, photo albums, games, and polls. Your website or blog will thank you for the fresh, new content!

Education Image Sets for iPods and other Mobile Devices
iPods, mobile phones, and most handheld computers can display pictures on their screens. Those images don't have to be vacation photos--they can be slides exported from PowerPoint. Come to this workshop to learn creative ways to use PowerPoint to make flash cards, study aids, eBooks, and math tools. You'll use PowerPoint to try your hand at some innovative techniques for making a series of images suitable for use on mobile devices. Leave with a set of JPEG images exported from PowerPoint for loading on your favorite iPod or handheld.

Mmmmm, Delicious! Online Bookmarking
These days teachers are using more than one computer, which can cause frustration when trying to access and organize their favorite websites. There's a tasty solution to having bookmarks spread among several computers: delicious.com. Delicious is an online bookmarking site that is used by thousands of educators. Not only will participants set up a free Delicious account, they will learn about some of the best websites out there for teachers and students. Participants leave with dozens of resources bookmarked, including lesson planning sites, online learning games, online manipulatives, work by other students, and educational blogs.

Palm Handheld Curriculum Workshop
Handhelds are a great tool to teach concepts in every curriculum area! Tony demonstrates samples activities for state capitals, math problem solving, parts of speech, and planets. Within these lessons, teachers will use wonderful freeware applications that teachers can use to teach many more activities than the samples ones presented.

You’re in Control: Producing Content for Handhelds
There are hundreds of great Palm OS applications for learning. However, handy applications shouldn't be the only files taking up the memory on your students' handhelds. Besides an array of programs, handhelds should be filled with quality content. Learn about creating eBooks, audio programs, websites, and videos for palm-sized computers. Discover how meaningful learning really can be when teachers and students produce and share their own digital content!

Fun & Free Palm Software
Dozens of educational software applications are avaialble for the Palm Operating System are absolutely free! Tony Vincent demonstrates software and classroom activities that teachers and students are using for learning. Examples include completing crazy word stories, arranging parts of speech, simulating pond life, and mathematical games.

I Like Handhelds Because…
Palm™ and Pocket PC™ handhelds aren’t simply organizers—they are fully functional computers that can run a variety of software applications! In fact, they are a great way to put a computer in the hands of every student. Classrooms all over the world are using handhelds for teaching and learning because of their low cost, portability, ease-of-use, and versatility. However, Tony Vincent has other reasons that he and his students love handheld computers in their school. From time saving software for teachers to creative ways to teach parts of speech, learn about how handhelds are great for teachers, students, and learning.

tony@tonyvincent.net

Topics

Web 2.0

iPods & iPhones

Handheld computing

Netbooks, laptops, & desktops

Podcasting

Blogging

Online publishing

Social bookmarking

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Digital video

Class and school websites

Graphic design

Digital images

Mac OS X & iLife

Interactive websites for students

Web tools for teachers

Screencasting

Why Tony Vincent?