Thanks to our amazing PTO, Kelly Van Meter and I were able to take two teachers to a national conference last week. Grace Alrtuz and Caroline Kimble had the chance to attend the first of what I hope will be many national conferences for them and the experience had a huge, positive impact on all of us.

Below are my Conference Notes done in the Paper 53 app. 

At one of our first IP/Ed Tech New Teacher Institutes, Kim McLaughlin and Marianna Ricketson modeled an Interactive Read Aloud lesson using Showbie and Paper 53. Kelly and I loved the idea and Natalie Higby was kind enough to let us come into her classroom and try it out with one of my favorite books, THE ART LESSON by Tomie dePaola. I used Paper 53 to document our experience with her Third Graders. 

For a while now, the IP's and Ed Techs have talked about having an organized, district wide system of training for our new teachers and last Thursday's First New Teacher Institute was a big step in that direction. 

We worked with K-2 teachers and their SPED counter parts in the morning and with 3-5 teachers and their SPED counterparts in the afternoon. Kelly VanMeter and I were in charge of organizing this first one and the remaining trainings will be divided amongst the remaining IP/EdTech teams. In addition to the fact that this training was much needed in this district, it was also one of the best opportunities for ALL of the Ed Techs and IP's to collaborate that I have seen in the 9 years that I have worked in this capacity. It was powerful because of the collaborative piece.  

Since I only seem to "speak Paper 53" these days, this blog post was once again done in that app. :)