http://thecomfort-zone.blogspot.com/2014/06/capturing-magic.html
This is one instance where pictures speak louder than words, so here is the story of my iPadpalooza experience.
Debbie Smith, Educational Technology |
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Such a great event from start to finish. If you didn't get a chance to read this upbeat review from an attendee, I would highly recommend it. It not only captures the feel of this event, it reminds all of us in this district that we are lucky to be a part of Eanes ISD. http://thecomfort-zone.blogspot.com/2014/06/capturing-magic.html This is one instance where pictures speak louder than words, so here is the story of my iPadpalooza experience.
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At some point in May, Margie Brown and I started talking about providing a day of training that would envelop all of the potential that we see for our district next year. As we chatted about our vision for the day, it occurred to me that we are at at jumping off point in this district. We have a strong foundation in the ins and outs of iPad integration and though it is a sometimes scary prospect, it is now time to leave the comfort of that foundation and blaze a trail into some new territories. It was then that the title of this workshop emerged. It turns out that using the Wizard of Oz theme not only added a whole new level of fun to the planning and preparation of the workshop, it provided some quality entertainment for the participants as well. Below is a recap of our dayj. You can click here to see the website we created for this presentation. All Things OzFrom snacks to movie clips to music from both the original movie and the modern day musical, "Wicked", we had it all. If We Only Had a Brain - AssessmentMargie started the day off by dipping into several technology tools that can be used for assessment. She covered the possibilities that exist with Kahoot, Infuse Learning and Nearpod. Our intention in this workshop was NOT to delve deeply into any given topic, but to give participants something to think about over the summer in the hopes that by the time school starts next year, they will have some idea of what parts of each topic they want to dive into more deeply with the support of their campus Ed Tech Brain BreakAfter all of the talk about assessment, it was time for a Brain Break and I borrowed an idea from my partner in crime, Kelly Van Meter. I used a Smart Notebook Random Group Generator to divide the participants into 5 groups. Each group was given a bag containing plastic straws and connectors and they were told that they would have 4 minutes to work together to build a free standing structure. At the end of the 4 minutes, we would make a decision as to which structure was the tallest. Follow the Yellow Brick Road - Workflow
Kahoot!For our second Brain Break of the day, Marianna Ricketson-Husain created a Kahoot game with questions based on The Wizard of Oz. Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain - Sharing MediaMy session was an intro to our new video sharing site - MediaCore. Marianna called it "our own personal You Tube" and that is an accurate assessment of this tool. The session focused on using MediaCore to demonstrate student learning, but I also covered a few of the other ways that we can utilize this site in the years to come. Click here to see the Smore that I created for this session. There's No Place Like Home - Learning SpacesMarianna closed out the day with a session on Learning Spaces. She showcased the blogposts of Ed Tech's who have a redesigned learning space on their campuses using these posts as a means of sharing possibilities with the attendees. She followed up this portion of her session by challenging the teachers to work with a group to dream large and create their ideal classroom. I got to kick this second week of Professional Development off by spending the day with Carl Hooker and Juan Orozco.
At the end of the day, I think that the participants left with a clear vision of not just what they wanted their classrooms to look like, but how they could get there and why it was important for them to do so.
After having a couple of days off to work on the PD that I will be delivering later this summer, I had the chance to spend the day with Tim Yenca, Lisa Johnson, Dillon Finan, Greg Garner and Janet Espinosa at Westlake High School. I have been searching for a long time for reasons to use iTunes U, so I was excited about this training as I had a strong suspicion that this group of dynamic educators would deliver the information that I would need to get on the iTunes U Bandwagon. I was not disappointed. By the end of the day, I walked away with my very first iTunes U Course. The SettingThe ContentWe moved on to a brief recap of the SAMR mode. Tim explained that this model is not a ladder with constant upward movement. There is an ebb and flow to the movement within the SAMR scale.
And then we dove into iTunes U. We joined the class that Lisa and Tim had set up for our course today and Tim went over the parts of the course with us stressing the importance of setting up a detailed class outline before you did anything else. The outline is more or less like a course syllabus and all other parts of the book will spring from that outline. We worked in groups to explore existing courses. We were tasked with choosing a course and finding 3 things we noticed about it and coming up with one question we might have about iTunes U courses in general. Then it was our turn to create a course. Though I had a few questions along the way, I felt like the information covered in the morning session had given me such a solid base that creating my course was fairly easy and oh so rewarding. Here is the link to my class. You can join this course by opening this link on your iPad. That will send a request for enrollment to me, I will approve you and you can learn all about MediaCore for Sharing Student Learning! Enjoy! https://itunesu.itunes.apple.com/enroll/F5Z-7RT-EL4 I got to spend the first day of my summer of professional development helping out in a workshop led by Greg Garner. He was ably assisted by Lisa Johnson and Janet Couvillion. It was a day filled with lots of learning and wonderful conversations. Below are some of my reflections on the day.
Lisa modeled the use of Infuse Learning. She read part of a children's book stopping occasionally to let us reflect on the book in Infuse Learning. The last hour or so of the day was spent helping the teachers select one of the new tools they had learned about and use that tool to develop an assessment of their own. When they completed this task, Greg had them write a description of their assessment in Google Moderator.
What a great way to kick off our summer learning season in EISD! |
Debbie Smith
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