I really liked being able to attend a conference in my PJ’s.  It is nice to have the ability to “attend” a conference on your own time and explore different sessions when you wish.  I don’t think it is as interesting as attending a conference in person, but with time and budget restraints, it is a good way to get conference information.

After listening to several of the presentations from the K12 Online Conference, I thought one of the most interesting and most useful was in the Getting Started section called “Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy.” Jennifer Kraft presented a number of free tools found on the internet for supporting literacy in the classroom.  Some of the tools were Text-to-Speech, Text-to-MP3, Speech-to-Text, E-books, Research Tools including Google Notebook, Delicious, Google Docs and others, and Concept Mapping (similar to Inspiration, but free).  As Jennifer herself said, the presentation was “fast and furious,”  but she gave very good supporting links to her slideshow and instructions for free downloads.  There were so many different tools mentioned that this is an excellent resource for teachers.  Many of the tools could help with reading and many with organization and research skills.