Illinois Computing Educator Resources

The Library Department spent our Institute Day (Friday, February 27th) at ICE, the annual conference for Illinois Computing Educators.  The schedule included an opening keynote and then a variety of poster and breakout sessions. Especially helpful this year is the set of online resources which are posted here. It means that even though we did not attend Thursday’s keynote on the Maker Movement, for example, we can still access the shared notes or look at presentation materials from other sessions like the one which Kathy Garneau  with husband Marc (who is New Trier technology Staff Developer and Librarian)  presented on “My school is 1:1 what do I do now.”  Use the drop down menus at the top of the main page to search by presenter, by day and time and so forth to find materials of interest to you.

This year, tons of resources covered topics like “Creating with iBooks Author” to “Getting the most out of your ChromeBook” and many, many more ideas. In fact, even though they were applicable across a range of grades and subjects, it did seem as though the sessions were more stratified by device and I am wondering what that portends for the future of both the ICE Conference and student exposure to technology.

As always, it was great to see friends and colleagues from sending schools and many local high schools.  I found myself missing Judy Gressel and thinking of how she always encouraged us to come away with at least one new thing that we could use immediately.  Lisa Dettling of Stevenson provided the one for me.  Her poster session was highlighting primary sources now more easily searchable due to a Library of Congress grant to Barat Education Foundation.  I know that are Modern World History students will love the cartoons and other information about Imperialism in the Philippines. Certainly, our AP US students who are building DBQ’s will be grateful for the general link, too.  

But the learning doesn’t stop – it will be fun to go back and review presentation materials from bloggers and tweeters like Nick Provenzano, Josh Stumpenhorst, Vinnie Vrotney, and more.  Also, several of us attended a session on Flipboard and decided  to explore its functionality further at an upcoming Library Department meeting.