Sunday River Practical Ed Tech Camp

Earlier this July while I was checking the #Edtechchat on Twitter I saw that there was one ticket left for the Sunday River Practical Ed Technology Camp run by Richard Byrne. Since my school is going BYOD next year I wanted to find new technologies that would be applicable to my students to engage in collaboration, curate their own content, and seamlessly integrate technology into my teaching practice.

Covered Bridge near Sunday River

Two tools that I can see myself implementing in various ways are Google Earth and ThingLink. I've used Google Earth for years, but have wanted to use it for virtual field trips and didn't know where to start. I also have tons of photos from our overseas school trips and personal vacations that I would love to use in class, but besides showing a slideshow and annotating them live each time I wasn't sure what I could do.

I can pare these two pieces of technology together to make many lessons more relevant and interactive. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, students can use both of these tools to create their own products and then share them out in presentations.

After our department trips overseas, I like to share the photos I've taken, but after that I rarely do anything with them other than posting them to a website to share them with family and friends. With ThingLink I can annotate the pictures with many more pieces of information. For example, a picture of me in front of the Acropolis could have video attached that I recorded while there, a wikipedia article on the Acropolis, a podcast of a professor who was lecturing on debates at the Acropolis, a link to the virtual tour of the Acropolis. While doing this we can also use Google Earth to gain many other pieces of information, such as how far it is from where we are, where it is in relation to Sparta, how high the acropolis is, among many other pieces of information that students can brainstorm to answer.

Constantly in this conference, I was thinking, why in 2013 are we still doing...a poster board presentation...a lecture...an in person discussion? There are so many other interactive options out there that can keep the classroom relevant after the bell rings and keep kids engaged in learning. Isn’t a goal of education to encourage students to become life-long learners who are responsible for that learning?

There were so many more applications that were introduced, discussed, and played around with but I don’t want to bore you! A future post will have a rundown of other applications and technology tools that were discussed. I certainly will post about how I am using new (to me) technology in my classroom over the course of the school year, so stay tuned!

NYSCATE Flipped Conference

What a way to get back into the swing of things! I must say the two days of professional development I just had were the best two days I have ever had. Sure, I've sought out PD before on my own and chosen the topic, but it was never quite driven by what I truly wanted to do. These two PD days, were exactly what I wanted and needed!

My first day of PD was at NYSCATEs Flipped Conference which was held at Pace University's Lubin Graduate Center in White Plains; it quite a trek for me from central Connecticut but it was well worth it! I felt connected with other "techy geeks" and not shunned for bringing a laptop and actually using it! We were encouraged to tweet out about the sessions and ask questions in that platform, it actually made the panel discussion go more smoothly than others I've seen. Perhaps because the question types could all be seen and discussed as a group rather than people jockeying for a microphone and to be heard!

Aaron Sams (@chemicalsams) was the keynote, you can read more about him, as well as other pioneer flippers on the Flipped Learning Network. To feel his energy and his passion was uplifting and inspiring. At this point in the summer I am starting to doubt if this is going to work in my classroom, are the kids going to buy into this method - and he won me over yet again! Showing me that there is an answer for every doubt and every problem that comes my way.

One of the best quotes that came from the day was "natural consequences have a place in flip classrooms". I am a firm believer in natural consequences, you threw food in the cafeteria and now your project is a gooey mess - what solution do you see here? You decided watching YouTube videos of cats dribbling basketballs was a better use of your time then watching my 5 minute video to prepare for class - I suppose you'll have to watch it in class and miss the discussion.

Also presenting were Kristin Daniels (@kadaniels) from Minnesota (also a part of FLN), Marc Seigel from New Jersey, Helaine Marshall from Long Island University, and Kristin Siano a student from LIU. It was great to hear a students perspective, although she was a non-traditional college student. I would like to hear from a high school or middle school student what they have found to be useful, non-useful, and great in this format.

In Marc Seigel's (@daretochem) session on Flipping Assessment Mindset, we discussed the philosophy of assessment in a flipped classroom. The idea that there is a spot for collaboration for ALL assessments, even unit end ones. Collaboration is a 21st Century skills (while perhaps not technological!) that students need to know how to do effectively. They need to know what they don't know and then how to get that information, with collaboration that is brought to the forefront and gives them the opportunity to figure it out, in a low risk environment.

The collaboration and expose to great minds was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I met wonderful people, and even two from the central CT area! They will be the ones who are creating CREC's version of the Flipped Conference in November that I'm hoping to attend (there are a few conflicts on the horizon already!). If I had just stopped here at this one day, I would have been ready to go back to school filled with ideas and energy. But thankfully in Marc's session he had plugged EdCamps! A quick Google search led me to find that CT was holding their's the very next day - but there was a waiting list, I put my name on it and by the end of the Flipped Conference I was off and signed up to go. So glad I made that decision. But more about that in the next post!

Thank you to NYSCATE for putting together this one day Flipped Conference - it was what I think many of us needed.