FETC Conference

I attended the FETC Virtual Conference on October 22, 2009. The presentation was by John Kuglin entitled, "Building 21st Century Classrooms in the Clouds!- A Desktop Sharing Presentation. I'm so glad I was able to see this presentation. First of all, I really didn't know what "the cloud" was. Now I know that it refers to a multitude of web based tools where you save your work out in the internet instead of on your local drive. This gives the user so much versatility on which programs are available. Instead of buying expensive software and multiple licenses, a teacher can log in to word processors, create presentations and even manage their phones for free. Using tools in the cloud provides high performance programs at a low cost. Professor Kuglin emphasized that student achievement is the motivation for using any of these tools.

Instead of using a powerpoint for his presentation, he pulled up websites on his notebook computer and demonstrated how they are used. He reviewed Buzzword (a word processor), Slide Rocket (the next generation of powerpoint), Zamzar (a document conversion service), Squarespace (a tool to build your own website), Prezi (presentations), and talked about Google Voice (Phone line management).

His recommendation for school districts is to use more of their budget for online resources and less for physical resources.