Reflections on the IIC Competition

My favorite presentation from the competition was the SS6 "Road to Revolution" pitch. This project presented a number of technologies that could be used in the classroom and focused on how to best bridge the gap between "research-based elements of effective teaching and the real world that we, and especially students, face: a world of technology."
The thing that I appreciated most about this presentation was that they focused on how, as teachers, we want to use technology to enhance our teaching but we need to be careful not to let it take over. I thought it was funny when they used the term "bot students" because that is exactly what we don't want; robot students who aren't comfortable unless they are safely behind a screen. We don't want technology to dominate our classrooms and I think that unless teachers have a clear idea as to how they are going to use technology, it can easily overtake everything.
Basically what this group did was create a class website that compiled resources like Prezi, Wufu, GoogleDocs, and YouTube, to make them readily accessible for the students. The resources are all aimed at helping students learn history by creating building blocks; getting them out of the textbooks and into the mindset of interactive, historical thinking.
Another really cool thing about this website is that it can be translated into different languages. I think this would be especially helpful for ELL students as well as students with non-English speaking parents.