Yes, it has indeed been a long time since I posted on this blog.

Recently, I did two presentations at our provincial Early Childhood Education Council‘s annual convention.This is a decidedly non-tech convention (I was apparently the only presenter who needed internet access) attended mainly by K to 2 teachers.

My first presentation was the Top Ten Free Technology Tools for Young Learners.  Choosing ten tools turned out to be more difficult than I had expected.  The top few were no brainers to me, but after that, choosing tools that I thought these teachers might use was harder than I had expected.  There are just so many that are possible to use.  I did get lots of questions on Twitter when I posted this link, asking why I had not included Voicethread in the list.  I do think Voicethread is a great tool, and I admire the work other teachers have done, but it has not worked well for me, so I didn’t think it was fair to include it.  The wonderful Amanda Marrinan got up at 3:30 in the morning to Skype in to my session and wowed the attendees with her lovely Aussie accent and passion.

My other presentation, Login for Literacy, was on a topic near and dear to my heart–using technology to support learning in the six strands of our provincial language arts curriculum.  The wiki also includes a few math links as I wanted the attendees to see the potential there as well. Wendy Goodwin graciously shared via Skype about the reader’s theatre we have done between classes using Skype, and some of the other things she has been doing with her teachers.

Several teachers who chose another session popped in to ask me for a copy of my handout, and were surprised to receive a url instead.  It was a weird feeling to be the only person at the conference checking things on her laptop, but definitely good to be reminded that most of the world does not work the way I do.