EdTechAri's Blog: August 2017

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Pre-Back to School Happenings

We’re back for the next installment of the blog and I’m coming in under the Tuesday wire, but I’m glad I was able to get it done. Having the video and blog aspect together is a great way to keep me motivated and posting. Thanks for checking in here on the blog and don’t forget to watch the video.

The first set of Snaps comes from the C3TC 2017 Conference that I got to participate in thanks to EdTechTeam. As I said in the vlog, I started my journey with EdTechTeam and really the road to being the coach I am now, years ago as an attendee at a summit. I attended an event in Napa, California and came back inspired to continue learning and sharing with others. That process eventually gave me the confidence to become a local presenter and technology coach for my district. One day an EdTechTeam employee approached me about working for them at an event and since then, I’ve been presenting for them almost on a monthly basis. What I love about working with EdTechTeam is these events are the ultimate iron sharpens iron situation. I’m always surrounded by so many phenomenal people, that I can’t help but learn from them. Whether it’s their presentation delivery, content or innovative ideas. I always return home from working energized and bucket full, and this event was no different. I was so lucky to be able to learn a lot about working with iPads, Seesaw, and Flipgrid. What was also great about this event was just seeing the other presenters. These events are like a family reunion, and this was no different.

A lot of what’s been going on in the department lately has been preparing for teachers to come back to work and August PD day. What you saw in the vlog, though was a bit different. This preparation was specifically for our Elementary Grade Level Leads and Technology Mentors. This is the first time a training of this scale has been undertaken and for the unified purpose of empowering grade level leaders with the skills to enhance their PLC. It was great to see teachers from so many schools across the district get the same information about important subjects like the new California dyslexia guidelines (AB1369), technology integration and adult learning theory. I’m hoping we continue events like this and we get to continue to be involved. One counter point about this, however, is I only got to be involved with the elementary training. Due to miscommunications and schedule conflicts, I wasn’t able to be apart of the secondary event. The good news is the footage from the Elementary PD wrap up is from a self-created inter-department PLC for staff developers. I have hope that meetings in this PLC will help foster collaboration in our district and closed the gap between the multiple departments and staff that provide professional development for teachers.

I think some of the other fun gems from the footage are simple presenter tips that I can pass on to others.

Have teachers sit by grade level or content area, especially when sites are mixed. Help push people towards collaboration and give them the opportunity to work in groups so hopefully, this can continue beyond this specific training.
When you can, tag team a PD with another presenter you trust. Having a colleague from my department there to help share the load, saved my voice and provided additional perspectives to our learners.
If your learners need to respond in an app, have them read something useful, like the California ELA/ELD Framework, important article or useful in district document.
Specifically, with technology remind teachers it’s embedded in the standards or in other district initiatives.
When attendees are walking in, play music, but not just any music, play stuff people can sing along to. I’m enjoying the Songs to Raise Your Kids to playlist on Google Play right now.
If you’re filming sections of your PD and your participants don’t want to be on camera, film the slide they are responding to, that way you get their awesome comments but respect their privacy.

Also, just like the in the vlog, I’m curious what’s your favorite back to school thing to do? Leave your thoughts in the comments and I’ll see you in two weeks for the next installment.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Hello World aka the First Vlog

Welcome! As you can see blogging hasn't been my strong suit. So to build in the more reflective piece of the Vlog and going to come here and do a write up of each episode.

One important thing I reveal in the first episode is my struggle with my personal feelings about my job last year. I'm happy to report that I feel cautiously optimistic about this school year but I'll get more into that when we get to the section of the Vlog with the staff meeting pictures. If you're interested in learning more about last year, click here.

First up in the Snap footage was a short bit from Raspberry Picademy. This was an amazing two-day learning experience hosted by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Part of the academy was an emphasis on physical computing and not just exposing students to computer based coding. It's really about digital making and getting students hands on components to create with hardware and code. I'm currently working on creating a digital ink name tag with a Pi that I’m hoping to debut at the Silver State Technology Conference in September. As a former high school English teacher the one thing I struggle with when in comes to Pis is how to successfully integrate them into the curriculum in a way that is authentic and not just an extra. I can see these work great in science, makerspaces and of course computer science, but I still struggling with the humanities connection. It’s something I hope to continue to explore as I continue to meet and collaborate with other Pi users both in and outside of education. If you’re using Raspberry Pis, I’d love to know what you’re doing with your students.

Another cool professional development I attended this summer was the California Google Geo Teachers Institute. It was such a fun time to be able to attend the Institute because Google Earth for the web had just launched along with the new Google Earth Education website. It was great to get to dive deep into the suite of Geo Tools because it wasn’t something I had ever really looked at before. I had dabbled with My Maps but it was great to get to explore tour builder and some of the geeky sides of mapping with KML files and ODKs. I’m excited to work with the History staff developer in my district to see where we can integrate these tools into our district curriculum to share the stories of place and time. Hopefully, I’ll have more to report on that late. Oh and this event finally gave me the push to purchase a Theta 360s. I can’t wait for it to come in so I can start sharing pictures of my world.

Although it was a half day event the California Teachers Summit was a great event. I really liked that the structure of the event was the same regardless of the satellite location. It was so nice to connect with teachers from the region and chat about topics that are important to us. One of the things I realized while at the conference was the importance of not just connecting and working with other teachers, but letting out local and state government know what we need to be supported. I encourage you to check out 5 Calls to see who your representatives are and let them know that protecting public school funding is important to you.

The LEAPS event was a week long conference for students in public service or law enforcement career pathways to come together to learn more about professions in the field and to practice 21st-century skills. I was only part of it for a day, but I helped students learn basic web design principals and create a web page with Google Sites. They were using them to promote a Shark Tank style presentation. It was a quick 3-hour experience, but it it was fun to interact with students. I’d like to take the content from this presentation and adapt it into something I can do again with more students or adults at conferences.

I spent some time prepping things for Breakout Edu this year. We’re going to continue with our district lending library but we had to replace some locks that died during the year. Normal wear and tear, but hopefully this year our lock graveyard won’t be as full. One thing I’ve learned is it’s important to change the locks as few times as possible to avoid accidentally messing it up. This is especially true for the speed lock. For the upcoming year, there will be either a card or the printed directions with the lock codes inside each box. The other thing we are going to do is not let people take locks out of other kits. We’ll have extra locks on hand if a game requires extra, but the locks in box A will only ever be with A from now on. I think when people went into other boxes to borrow locks when they put them back, they forgot to say what the code was so it was easy to get things confused.

Last but not least there were some Snaps from an all day department meeting. In the meeting, we went over our department vision and goals for the year along with our assigned projects. It was nice to have a clear mission from our department leadership. I’m one of those people that needs to have a clear purpose for what I do to see it as valuable. So this was a welcome meeting. When we got to the sticky notes part, I got a bit worried, there are 7 sticky notes that belong just to me, one of which actually has five sub stickies. Then there are 7 sticky notes that are shared between myself and another technology coach. It’s a bit daunting. I’m excited in many ways because many of these things put me in direct contact with teachers, but I just want to do it well. I don’t like to not put forth my best effort so time management will be big this year.

Our district has invested in the idea of the Gallup Strengths and we talked quite a bit about that at our department meeting too. I’m hoping that will help me with the workload for the year. My top five strengths are relator, command, significance, activator and deliberative. We spent time learning about our strengths and the strengths of other on the team. It seems like this won’t be a one and done type thing so I’m excited to how this progresses and I’m personally excited to use this as an opportunity to grow. The strength I’m going to focus on first is deliberative because one of the qualities of a deliberative person I don’t have it thinking more before I speak

Overall I think all of this is a great start to the year and I’m excited to get going. Fingers crossed I can keep up the vlogging and reflecting to see how all of this turns out. If you go back on the blog I’m sure you’ll see many failed attempts to keep this updated, but I’m hoping I don’t fall into bad habits.

If you have ideas for future vlogs or have feedback feel free to let me know and don’t forget to get connected!