Teaching in the 21st Century Conference

 Illinois State University held a one day conference on teaching in the 21st century. The T21 conference is for teacher education majors who are incorporating technology into their classroom's curriculum. I had attended the conference and I attended a few beneficial presentations.


The first presentation I attended was two teachers who were presenting on using Smartboards in the classroom. I also attended a presentation that was about online books and literature in education. I then attended a third session about the power of iPads in education. 


I am going to blog about a concept from one of the presentations that I really enjoyed, which is http://www.shelfari.com/. This is powered by amazon. This is the first time that I have heard of this, as well. One of the laboratory schools in my area have started their fourth graders using this. It basically allows the student to interactive with their reading experiences, and share them with their classmates. The students can search books that they have read, are interested in, or are currently reading and place them on their 'book shelf'. They then can write what they thought about the book and share that with their peers. They can also see what their friends are reading.Once a book has been added to the book shelf, other books are streamed into the users page that are similar. At this school, they are teaching their students to always have their next read available, and I think that this is a good way to enforce that concept. 


Since I am suppose to be blogging specifically about Assistive Technology, I feel that this can be considered AT for students who needs organizational skills. They would then have all their independent reading in one place. There is a link to amazon.com to purchase the book, but I wouldn't suggest have young children do this, but you can purchase eBooks and other formats through amazon. To relate to my studies as a teacher for the visually impaired, I feel that this would be beneficial, providing magnification, and screen readers, depending on the severity of the visual impairment.  


I feel that eBooks are growing in popularity and at the end of the presentation the presenter read us It's a Book by Lane Smith. Here's a trailer for the book! I thought it was quite funny. 
(Paperback books are still fun to read too! ) 

Thanks for reading, 


@Amber_Vorderer