I attended the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington, D.C. this summer, and it was great to have some focused time to reflect on my teaching practices. It’s interesting to me that some of the real gems I took from the conference had more to do with learning and teaching than technology. But I’ll save those for another time, because, after all, NECC is a tech conference.

So here are ten tech treats from NECC 2009 (and who shared them and their Twitter name, where applicable):

1.    http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/About+UDL - Universal design for learning – think curb cuts for the classroom! EVERY teacher needs to think about how these accommodations could benefit many students (not just students with special needs). (via @KarenJan aka Karen Janowski)

2.    http://www.techmatrix.org/ - analyzes tech tools for reading, writing and math for various special needs. Think UDL – perhaps you’ll find something that will benefit many students – not just students with IEPs.

3.    http://www.readwritethink.org/ is a website developed by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. Links for the National Day on Writing October 20th, 2009.

4.    http://www.mathtrain.tv/ - Videos by middle school students, for middle school students, teaching various math concepts. Great place for students to get a genuine audience while teaching and learning math. (from Ihor Charischak)

5.    http://www.findsounds.com/ This search engines finds sounds on the internet that can be embedded into presentations, used as writing prompts, or…use your imagination! (I’ll take wagers on what middle school boys will search for first – and yes, they are there.) (via @attipscast aka Chris Bugaj)

6.   Science Leadership Academy. This is not just for science teachers. The SLA is an inquiry-driven, project-based high school in Philadelphia focused on 21st century learning. I heard the principal, Chris Lehmann, speak on Progressive Pedagogy and 21st Century Skills and was impressed with their approach and their results. In this link, you will find a his presentation slides and links to SLA's project planning worksheets which are first rate.

7. http://taggalaxy.de/ - Tag Galaxy grabs pictures from Flickr that have been tagged with a certain label and organizes them according to their related tags. I can see uses for teaching everything from vocabulary to verbal reasoning and beyond.

8.    http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en Cut and paste any text and it will read it to a student; Students can install a bookmarklet in their browser to have any thing on the web read to them. (via @LParisi and @CSouthard)

9.    http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Audacity is free, downloadable sound editor. It gives you a visual of what you sound like so you can edit out pauses, ums, stutters, etc. This would be a great tool to help students practice speaking fluently for class presentations. (via @CSouthard and @LParisi)

10.    http://www.mathplayground.com/ Fun, interactive games for reinforcing math skills. Students love it. (via @CSouthard and @LParisi)

And if that wasn’t enough or you didn’t find something you can use or you just want more: Top 10 free Web 2.0 Tools Session by Steve Dembo http://prezi.com/117545/.

Remember when you were little and you had a favorite picture book that you asked everyone – mom, dad, grandparents - to read to you? How many times was that book read to you? I bet I have read To Kill a Mockingbird that many times.

I began to re-read TKAM again last week, and as always, I felt like I was welcoming an old friend back into my life. I know this book so well, and yet it gives me something new every time I read it. Students' insights into the book also give me a fresh perspective on the book each year. (See the Student Zone of our Mind Candy student blog for their thinking about TKAM.)

Yet there are questions I ask every time I read it that I never quite get answered: What are “Big Mules,” who was “Lorenzo Dow,” and is the Gray Ghost a real book or something that sounds real that Harper Lee made up? No matter. These details add resonance to the story but you don’t need to know all the answers to follow the plot.

Are there stories you like to re-read? Why do we enjoy reading things over and over? Have you ever re-read something and not enjoyed it as much as you recalled? I'd love to hear about your experiences with re-reading.