Part of Upcoming Events
The IATEFL Conference officially begins today. I am happy to be one of many official bloggers for the event. Additionally, I will be conducting a workshop about the successful integration of Bring Your Own Devices:
Time: Wed., April 10th, 11:40:00 AM – 12:25:00 PM, Hall 11c
Description: Transforming Trends: Effective Integration of Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT/ BYOD)
How do we motivate students to learn beyond our classrooms? How do we equip classrooms with technology? A recent trend is for schools to implement Bring Your Own Technology policies. In this session, we will learn about the benefits, plan for the pitfalls, and participate in BYOT activities designed for language learners. Discover the hype and bring your device along!
10+ Resources & Tips
Whether you are traveling to Liverpool to catch it live or experiencing it virtually for free, you might find the following resources below helpful:
- Experience the conference for free virtually via the livestream and catch educational technology speakers on Monday livestreaming free for the LTSIG
- Download the PDF of the program for offline use on your mobile device or computer. I open it in iTunes and bookmark from there. It’s the easiest way and you don’t need Internet access to view it.
- If you’re attending the event live, don’t forget to download the free Beatles Story app that works offline for IOS devices and Android devices.
- Download the free It’s Liverpool IOS App that works offline and gives audio guides as well as has a very cool Augmented Reality feature
- Download the free Liverpool City Guide app with restaurants, museum information and more for Android devices
- Follow the #IATEFL hashtag on Twitter to catch snippets of various presentations
- Check out the other registered bloggers to get resources from various presentations
Free apps that I like to use for conferences:
- Google Drive for all devices- I can document all events offline and it automatically updates when I do get an Internet connection. From here I can copy/paste to my blog. Tip: Create your presentation hand-outs here and use a service like Bit.ly to give to your audience. They can access the hand-out and complete it in real-time while attending your presentation. You can also download and put it on a Flash drive. As your audience comes in, they can transfer it on their laptops to complete in case they don’t have Internet access.
- Try Evernote for all devices & your computer to take pictures of slides, write notes, etc and has a cool feature that allows you to search the text within pictures. You can use it offline then it syncs on all devices when you get a wifi connection. Try using Platfolio to turn your Evernote into a website. Tip: Take pics of business cards, categorize them as IATEFL 2013 contacts, & Evernote will allow you to search by text
- PenUltimate– create handwritten notes, drawings, and even scribble on images. Your notes are categorized & you can search your own handwriting. It doesn’t have to be typed because this is an Evernote app.
- Skitch-(free, Android & i-devices) annotate images and websites with capturing and doodle and text tools. Tip: Take pics of the websites shown in a presentation then write in your notes. Evernote feature so it becomes searchable
- Store and organize the presentation bookmarks with Diigo that has a free app for all devices, allows you to view bookmarks offline, and can be set to auto-blog the bookmarks for easy reporting. You can even auto-bookmark whatever you favorite as a tweet and have tags created through hashtags. This is a paid feature, though.
- Idea Sketch IOS/Android Mindmapping App– Draw a diagram, mind map, concept map, or flow chart and convert it to a text outline and vice versa. Print with a PDF or download to Dropbox.
- iClicker Lite– The paid version offers more but try out the free version. Use your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad as your PowerPoint remote clicker to view slides and slide notes as you present. Make annotations and show it to your audience as you present. Need wifi. **For navigating your Powerpoint slides during your presentation!
- You can create an email as an offline draft then send that to Blogger and it will become a post. Read more information here, freetech4teachers.com/2013/02/how-to-post-to-blogger-via-email.html
- Prezi– create presentations and have automatically online with all the clickable links. Can embed.
- Haiku Deck-(free, iPad) create dynamic presentations on your iPad. Many different backgrounds, themes, creative common pictures, and fonts. Helps students learn visual design as each slide is meant for a few words. Try this for your next presentation.
- I upload my slides on Slideshare which also has a free mobile app.
- I tweet with Hootsuite on my mobile and take images with Instagram.
