Educational Technology at IU13

It is so hard to believe that we are already past the first week of May!  This Spring time is dashing away quickly as we look forward to the end of the school year.  There is still a lot to be done although it seems that May is on the fast track for everyone. As we bring this school year to a close, we have one more Tech Integrator/Media Specialists Mtg on the 20th, from 8:30-12:00 that you will not want to miss!

This Spring has been a very exciting time for our newly revised IMS 2.0.  Please make sure that you have read about our IMS 2.0 changes that we have been making for next year.  Here are a few highlights to keep in mind:

In case you missed our meeting this morning, we wanted to make sure that you could watch the announcements and experience the first session provided by our guest speaker, Richard Byrne. Richard walked us through a Celebration of Discovery, Discussion, and Demonstration. We were encouraged in our continual path of technology integration as well as challenged to continue carrying the torch helping to lead educational transformation one step at a time. We are pleased to announce that Richard Byrne will serve as our Keynote Speaker for our Elementary Technology Conference on Dec. 9, 2014.  Check out the meeting agenda for the day and the video below.

We are very excited to announce our Instructional Media Services 2.0 coming to a school district near you! From valuable district feedback, we recently updated & revamped the IMS in order to continue to meet district’s current needs and initiatives. Our IMS 2.0 focuses on supporting the 21^st century skills, digital-age literacy, inventive thinking, high productivity, and effective communication. Through the use of CultureGrams, our students can travel to exquisite places in the world, researching new cultures, languages, foods, and customs. Through Discovery Education, students create amazing digital poster boards where they post videos, text, and images of content skill sets learned in the classroom k-12 aligned to the standards. Students can travel across the “Reading Rainbow” and learn new skills and programs via having exclusivity to PBS videos through Safari Montage. Furthermore, students can explore the galaxies, constellations, Biology cells, plate tectonics, and Greek Mythology using one of our four Starlabs. No matter if students are studying world languages, math, science, language arts, humanities, social studies, or any other electives, our IMS 2.0 provides materials and resources for everyone. Our new addition, OverDrive, will carry our literacy book bag collections into the 21^st century by providing access to eBook publications from the number one eBook provider to libraries in the world. Not only will students enjoy many fiction titles, they will have access to nonfiction titles supporting the standards and lexile reading levels. OverDrive Read will enable teachers to “talk to the text” showing students how to annotate on eBooks taking notes in the classroom setting or enable students to check out eBooks via their own devices Android, IOS, Windows, or any browser. Explore the IMS 2.0 as we provide updates and continual support via for all our IMS members on our IMS Blog http://info.iu13.org/ims.

We are pleased to announce an upcoming Starlab training on June 26, 2014 8:30 am - 12:30 pm  as part of the IMS Summer Academy.  In order to reserve and use one of the four Starlabs we have available, all facilitators must attend one Starlab training.  This training will cover how to reserve, set up, operate, and pack up the Starlab.