iEngage-Berwyn...We did it!

Hosting a two day Educational Technology Conference is a lot of work! We spent 10 months planning for it and it seems like it was here and gone in the blink of an eye. I was on the sponsorship and PR/social media committee for the planning team, dubbed iLead. Here we are at our kickoff which took place at one of our institute days.

There were many committees and we learned a lot along the way. On my committee we solicited sponsors. Then we got the word out about the conference. It is important to keep really good notes, admit when you are wrong, and reflect after the experience about what went well and what did not. I'm not going to air all of that here.

Friday, May 8th
On Friday morning we arrived early. There was nothing left to do except let the people show up. The LaVergne Gym looked fabulous and we were ready to go. We started with an overview of what makes +South Berwyn 100 special. The site visit welcome was given by +Shannon Soger. She talked about our state report card statistics and the five categories that make us an Apple Distinguished Program; visionary leadership, innovative teaching and learning, flexible learning environment, compelling evidence of success and ongoing professional development. She did a fabulous job! Next we were on our way to start the first of two site visits for the day. I was assigned to Emerson School. I taught in that building for 17 years, so I was glad to showcase it. The visitors were able to go to different classrooms and see 1:1 computing in action. One of the visitors remarked after seeing the first grade bilingual teacher, "Let's stay here. I could watch her teach all day." It was so great to hear that. 

Site visitor talking about 1:1 with one of our 1st graders

We traveled back to LaVernge by bus to see the lunch time keynote speaker +Carl Hooker of Hooked on Innovation (read his blog post about the conference here). His keynote was thought provoking, interactive, and funny. Carl also brought with him the App Mazing Race - iEngage-Berwyn. It was a big hit! 

Activity during Hooker's keynote

Waid & Hooker

In the afternoon we went back for another site visit with a different group to see more teaching and learning in action. As our superintendent +Stan Fields always says the devices are not the magic of our district - it is the people; the teachers, the support staff, the secretaries, the custodians, the bus drivers. It is a true group effort. The other thing that makes our district different is that we are not afraid to change, to innovate. We didn't just bring in computers and iPads for everyone. We changed almost everything! At the same time as adopting 1:1 we started full day kindergarten, adopted the co-teaching model, purchased furniture for flexible learning environments, changed the food served in our lunchrooms, made our schools safer, adopted standards based grading, dual language, and so on. 

Afternoon site visitors to Emerson School

To finish the afternoon we had a debriefing panel of "experts" from our district. It included (left to right) +Stan Fields superintendent, +Jeremy Majeski building principal, +Jim Mukite technician, +Shannon Soger director of 1:1 program, +Jen Lehotsky middle school teacher, +Jordan Garrett instructional coach and +Christina Betz elementary teacher. Here visitors were able to ask questions and get detailed answers about what they saw during their visits. 

Brad Waid demonstrating Color Alive

On Friday night we went to the Carleton Hotel in Oak Park for the social event associated with the conference. +Brad Waid decided early on in the planning that a good social event was a must. We worked with myOn and +DAQRI Education to plan the event. Students, their families and conference attendees were invited. There was a viewing party for videos created using myOn books. myOn is an interactive digital library from Capstone Publishers that we use in our district. The student and class videos were phenomenal. Click on the myOn link above to see the winners. My favorite was Noor's video! Then we had an adults only party featuring Big Data, a band made up of Tech Directors from around the state of Illinois, and +DAQRI Education. +Brad Waid demonstrated the augmented reality magic of Crayola Color Alive. It combines just the right amount of hands on and tech for our students. It's the simplicity of a coloring page with the magic of DAQRI's 4D app. No social event these days is complete with out a photo booth. We used our Double Robot and the Simple Booth app. A good time was had by all. 

Anne Truger, Jordan Garrett,
Kevin Honeycutt, Brad Waid

Dancing to Big Data

An aside - While we were waiting for the festivities to begin we found ourselves in the bar attached to the hotel, Poor Phil's. It was here that the iCoach team had their first team meeting in Spring 2012. I knew at that moment that the entire event was going to be a success. 

Saturday, May 9th
We slept quickly and arrived at Heritage Middle School on Saturday, to do the conference portion of the event. There were poster sessions put on by the students and teachers. These were summations of successful tech projects from the school year. They were outstanding! John Antonetti gave the opening keynote. He talked about student engagement. He was wonderful!

Emily & John Antonetti

Student poster session

After the Keynote it was time for the concurrent sessions. There was time for two in the morning. +Jordan Garrett and I presented our Bringing PLCs to Life with Google + . There were many great sessions. You can find the presenters' slides and picture archive in the iEngage Google + Community. Next it was time for lunch and the leadership panel.

Dr Leonard, Mr Polyak, Dr Hutton, Dr Voltz

One more session in the afternoon, and then the closing keynote by +Kevin Honeycutt. Kevin's keynote was exceptional. He covered so many points. If you ever have a chance to hear him speak you should make it happen. 

Kevin Honeycutt with Shannon Soger is the background

The entire two day period I was tweeting and posting to Instagram. I was also monitoring the hashtag #iEngagebwyn for activity for our social media contests. We had plenty of great prizes to give away thanks to our generous sponsors. Here is a link to the Storify for Friday and for Saturday. We generated so much traffic on Twitter that we were a trending topic for Chicagoland on Friday!!! These Storifys give you a very good picture of both days. There are over 1,000 Tweets and Instragram posts from both days!

Shannon - Thanks for Dreaming Big!

2 Guys Visit South Berwyn

The students and staff of +South Berwyn 100 will benefit greatly from having +Drew Minock and +Brad Waid come and train us on the use of +DAQRI Education 4D Studio. 4D Studio is an augmented reality platform that is far superior to those that are out there. I think it is better than Layer and Aurasma both!

Drew and Brad arrived in Berwyn on Thursday morning. We toured 1 elementary school and 1 middle school. We are well known for our site visits. +South Berwyn 100  has hosted over 600 people from 10 states over the last 3 years. They come to see our 1:1 program in action. Seeing is believing. We saw an iPad classroom, robotics club, Makey Makey, 6th grade language arts and math Macbook classes. Next we went to a planning meeting for our +iEngage Berwyn 2 day Ed Tech conference on May 8-9, 2015. It was great to have input from Brad and Drew. They have been to many national conferences. Brad and Drew along with +Kevin Honeycutt and JohnAntonetti will be featured at the conference. Brad's and Drew's input was invaluable. After that +Shannon Soger and I did the 2 Guys Show live with Brad and Drew. 

During the show we talked about what it takes to have an effective 1:1 program, the power of social media and planning an ed tech conference.  It was so much fun to talk about 2 of my favorite things, social media and the great things we are doing in our district. I love my job! It was so much fun doing the show. I hope you can find some time to watch it. 

On Friday Brad and Drew trained our staff on DAQRI 4D Studio augmented reality platform. Teachers were given release time to attend a half day session to learn how to use 4D Studio and begin to create triggers. We were able to work in our new district professional development room. It is an awesome space for teaching and learning. The first step was to have the team members apply for a free 4D Studio edu license.  Brad and Drew demonstrated many of the pre-made DAQRI products,  Anatomy 4D, Enchantium and Elements 4D. They had us hooked. We saw the power that augmented reality could have in our classrooms. Augmented reality is fun and it brings things into the classroom that we could not bring in on our own. Similar to the way Skype or Google Hangouts bring experts into your classroom. Elements 4D enables the user to interact with 36 naturally occurring elements. The user can see what chemicals like, mercury, look like on their own, or what the chemical reaction would be if any of the elements were combined. Using the app is sure to bring oohh's and aahh's to any classroom! Next we dove into 4D Studio. Drew and Brad showed us how to use all the bells and whistles that go with 4D Studio. You can find 4D video tutorials here. The best part was that teachers were given time to play and build triggers to use in their classrooms before they left. Teachers are working now to create projects with their students. Primarily lower elementary teachers are creating experiences for their students to use in class on the iOS devices and upper elementary and middle school teachers are having their students create their own experiences to share with classmates. We hope to have some triggers ready to publish soon. 

It was a great experience for everyone involved and we look forward to the return of Brad and Drew so that we can show them what teachers and students in our district have created.