Thursday was the first day of the ICE general conference but day two for me since I attended a workshop Wednesday.  Here are the presenter notes for Thursday.

My first session was led by Nino Alvarez, Renee Fitzsimmons and Enda Kelly and covered student digital portfolios.  An idea I’m taking back: ask students to complete a section at the bottom of their artifacts stating which district standards are being met. Besides being a tool for students and their parents it helps teachers achieve the highest rating in Domain 1 and Domain 4 of the Danielson Framework. This, in a way, reminded me of George Couros @GCouros who puts each of his blog posts under the Principal Quality Standard as outlined by Alberta Education that he is meeting, as I mentioned in a previous blog post this summer.

Keith Sorenson, in an entertaining and interesting session, talked about the value of badges and in particular the Open Badge System. This system allows badges to be awarded which are recognized by a governing body. This system is new and all the kinks have not been worked through yet. Kids (and adults) love badges!

Luis Perez @_Luisfperez is legally blind. He led a fantastic session on photography! He hooked his iPhone up to the projector and showed us how he manages to take his great shots, and how he tunes and edits them, and also covered some basic skills such as the rule of thirds, or as he says, “move the darn thing out of the center.”  Luis suggests okdothis to increase your skills. This session led me to some new thinking and I hope to write a post in the future to give justice to what I learned in this session.

Carlos Fernandez, James Gubbins, and Michelle Russell gave us an insight into how they produce their well-known EduWin Weekly podcasts supported by Edreach. They brought their equipment with them, showing us their favorite hardware tools, such as microphones, and also gave us some helpful hints regarding software.

Carol Broos’ session offered some new ideas to me regarding digital footprints and branding. She suggested using a color that represents you, 2 or 3 words, 2 or 3 musical notes (really!), a formal and informal photo, and an About.Me account.  Think like Nike and CocaCola. An important point: whatever your weakness–present it as a strength!