Hello from Manchester, NH, where I am soaking up all kinds of ideas at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference! I thought about you fourth graders all day today as I did some very rigorous learning, hoping that matching the classes I take to your interests will help me challenge you to reach new heights too.

This is what our classrooms look like here at the conference center.  There are hundreds and hundreds of teachers here collaborating.

We chose from lots of types of workshops.  One that I chose was on all kinds of things you can do with google, such as tell it to alert you every time a certain kind of story  goes across the internet (like New England Patriots) or make a calendar for your blog or search inside books to see if they are the right ones for your research.

I thought you’d like to see Mrs. Hunewell hard at work during a class we went to about all sorts of wonderful iTouch apps.  My favorites were storytelling ones, where you can mix pictures and audio to make little slideshows even while you’re on field trips!  Just wait until we try that!

Because I’m kind of an outdoor nature kind of girl, one of the things that made me giggle all day long was trying to find who was using the most tech devices at once throughout the day.  People were listening to teachers, trying what the teacher said to try on their computers, sending surprising new ideas they heard to other learners by using Twitter on their phones, using iPads, and even more things all at one time.  No wonder I’m tired tonight!

You know how I get a big thrill out of life?  Well, this was the most breathtaking moment of my whole day, even after learning a lot of pretty cool things.  I treated myself to staying overnight here in Manchester, and this is what I saw when I walked into my room.  Wow!  A picture can’t begin to show its amazingness.  The window goes from my knees to the ceiling and is tipped back so you can see the sky and the planes going overhead.  I am on the twelfth floor, and I can view the panoramic lights of the whole city.  I’ll take a better picture in the morning when the sun comes up.

There is more to tell you, but tomorrow is another day, as my mama would say.  I hope you are filling our guest teacher’s bucket with your marvelous choices.  Here’s a goodnight cinquain for you.

Fourth Graders

Energetic, Creative

Questing, Imagining, Wondering

The joy of my days

My scholars