iEngage-Berwyn 2016

After months of planning we once again hosted the 2nd annual iEngage-Berwyn. It was held on Friday, April 29 and Saturday, April 30, 2016. It took months of planning. It comes and goes so fast after all that planning that I really tried to enjoy it this year. I am in charge of sponsorship for the event. We had more sponsors than we did last year and we brought in more sponsorship dollars and more prizes. I have learned a lot about the way these things work over the last 2 years. I need to modify the letter we use and rework some of the sponsorship levels for next year. It really is all about relationships. I have developed some good relationships with our vendors now.

Friday started with +Jordan Garrett , my team leader, giving an overview of Berwyn South. She told our story; how we got to where we are and where we hope to go in the future. Next we loaded the buses to go for the school tours. I was giving the tour of Komensky this year. I spent a lot of time at Komensky this year, so I was very happy to be there for iEngage. Truth be told, I am proud of what is going on in all 8 of our schools and would do the tour for any of them! The team, +Maria Lopez and +Ryan Kozin and I, told Komensky's story quickly. We concentrated on talking about Genius Hour and how it helped increase the positive culture of their school community. 

We went back to LaVergne Education Center (our district office site) to be inspired by +Sabba Quidwai at the lunchtime keynote. Sabba told her story and talked about design thinking. It was great to have her talk about design thinking because we are going to use it as the basis of our Maker/PBL curriculum moving forward. Click here to watch Sabba's keynote.

Love this quote - Why talk about others when we can talk with others. 

After lunch we went back for more site visits. During the site visit portion we show our visitors 1:1 in action. Many districts or teachers are still in the beginning of their technology journey, and they are looking for guidance and inspiration. When we walk around to the different classrooms it is wonderful to see all the teaching and learning going on in our classrooms. We used Twitter as our back channel. If any of our visitors had any questions that they needed answered or in more detail they could Tweet at us. At the end we had a debriefing panel, a question and answer session. I was lucky enough to sit on the panel with some of my amazing colleagues. Click here to see the closing session on Friday. 

The gentleman on the end is one of my former 4th gr
students now a principal in our district.

On Friday evening we went to dinner with +George Couros who was our closing keynote on day two. It was great to get to know George better. He really pushed my thinking on where SAMR fits in our schools. His stance is that an app or assignment that we may label as substitution on the SAMR ladder could actually redefine a students entire school experience. It could be totally transformational for that child. This is a very interesting way of looking at things. It is true, but I still feel like Dr. Puntedura's research still makes sense to me as well and that all students can benefit if we keep shooting for redefinition in our classrooms. We also talked about the use of SnapChat in education. George loved my Chicago accent so much and the way that I say SnapChat that he gave me that nickname. George also razzed me a lot about my love for the Chicago Cubs.

Saturday was the traditional break out session conference. I started the day bright and early by making sure everything was set up properly in the exhibit hall. This year we interspersed our student poster sessions with our vendor booths in order drive more traffic toward the vendors. Our guests started the day with a motivational keynote by +Jennie Magiera. 

Jennie talked about what it takes to be a change agent in your school or school system. This quote stuck with me about being a change leader - "Instruction is paramount to change in educational systems." Meaning it is not about the apps or the device. In fact I have always said that if you put a device in the hands of a bad teacher it only magnifies the problems. This is why all professional development should be structured around curricular areas not around app names. Click here to see Jennie's keynote.

Leadership Panel

I did not go to a the first session. Instead I had to check on the vendors and make sure other things were being taken care of. I presented in the second session. My session was called iPad 101: What's Your One Screen? The theory is that you could have 15- 20 cross curricular apps to run your entire classroom. You can use them for any subject. Some are content creation apps, some are assessment apps, your LMS, a work flow app (Notability, and/or Evernote), and 1 math drill app and 1 ELA drill app. We had lunch and then a leadership panel lead by Dr. Rich Voltz (@rvoltz), the Associate Director for the Illinois Association of School Administrators. Next was the third and final break out session, which included Breakout Edu. If you haven't heard or it click on the link. It is definitely worth trying in your classroom in the upcoming school year.

We have a great partnership with myOn, a digital reading platform. We had a video contest for our students and any others that use the myOn platform. The theme this year was "In my dreams I'm...". Students created videos based on books that read on the myOn platform that went with the theme. Once again we had some great submissions. Here is a picture of one of the winner's accepting his $100 Visa gift card. His teacher got a set of class books! Thank you myON. 

The always passionate - George Couros

Finally, it was time for George Couros's closing keynote. George was amazing and a great way to close the conference. If you have not read George's Book - Innovator's Mindset, you should put it on your summer shelfie. 

The exhibition hall (or multipurpose room) had vendors, student poster presentations and teachers poster presentations. The poster presentations showcased some of the outstanding projects that teachers, and students had completed during the school year.

Here are some additional pictures from the event! It could not have been the success that it was without the help and hard work from everyone involved: teachers, administrators, iLead team, bus drivers, lunch room staff, administrative assistants, clerks, custodial and maintenance staff, students and teachers. It is a true team effort for our entire district. I mentioned teachers twice on purpose.

Our greatest resource - Our student volunteers

The iLead Team - They made it happen!

Our very lean but very talented Tech Department staff  - We couldn't have done it without your talent and expertise!

  

Summer Shelfie List

I am not a fast reader. I have an eye tracking/ word tracking problem. I choose to read mostly blog posts and magazine articles during the school year. Summer is usually the time that I dig into a good novel for enjoyment. I am currently reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King. It is about a school teacher who travels back in time to try to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy. I really like to read Stephen King novels. This will be my 7th or 8th title. I'm reading it on my iPad through the Kindle app. 

The other book on my list for enjoyment is The Diner by Dean Michael Zadak. This book is written by a childhood friend of mine. His mother is my godmother. This is his second published book. I am very excited to read it. I pre-ordered this book for my Kindle app. It will be available on July 27th. It's only $5.99!

I have 4 professional books on my list. The first one I will read is Beyond The Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family-School Partnerships by Henderson, Mapp, Johnson, and Davies. This book has a 2008 copyright, but I have seen good things about it on Twitter, so I thought I would try it. There are so many ed tech books out there I thought I would go back to basics. Since I teach in a low income area it is important to bring in the parents as much as possible. I have 2 books that I have already read about engaging low income and Hispanic parents. I'm hoping to gain a little more insight here. I'm hoping there will be some things in the book that we have never thought of.

The next title in the stack is Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom. I had to buy this book written by +Kristin Ziemke and +Katie Muhtaris. As you may have read in my last post I have been seeing Kristin a lot various conferences. She is a great person. I'm looking forward to getting some new ideas to integrate into our 1:1 classrooms. I was honored to buy her book and get it autographed! 

My team is going to be doing a book study soon. I am actually hoping that it is going to be in the fall, because I have more book right now than I will probably finish. None the less it is a title that I am VERY interested in reading. It is by my coaching idol, Elena Aguilar, The Art of Coaching Teams: Building Resilient Communities that Transform Schools. If this book is 1/2 as good as The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation then it will be well worth the time. If you are a coach, and you don't have either of these books in your collection I suggest you buy them. 

Finally, I don't think I will get to it this summer, but the next book in the pile is Integrating Technology in the Classroom: Tools to Meet the Needs of Every Student by Boni Hamilton. I met her at the Ed Tech Coaches Playground at ISTE 2016 and she gave me an autographed copy for FREE (a $25 value)! 

All of the professional books are in soft cover and all of the books for enjoyment are on the Kindle app. I like to annotate in the book with pen and or highlighter in hand. I could do this on the Kindle, but I prefer to do it on an actual book. Also I read a blog post awhile back about how to read professional books in order to get the most out of them. This blog post by Dave Stuart Jr. was extremely helpful to me when reading education PD books. How to Read Professional Development Books: 7 Tactics You Might Not Be Using. Numbers 2, 4, and 6 especially resonated with me. 

What are you reading this summer? Do you prefer a book in your hand or an electronic read, and why?

SIT - Students Involved with Technology - An Ed Tech Conference By Kids For Kids

The BigTime Literacy Blogging Challenge has forced me to go back, and look at the posts that I have in DRAFT, and hopefully finish them. Here is one that was definitely worth finishing and worth your time to read.

How did you build this robot?

The SIT Conference was AMAZING!
+Berwyn South District 100 hosted the SIT Conference. The SIT Conference is an ed tech conference by kids for kids. The students are the presenters and the attendees. That's what makes it unique. There are 6 sites across the state of Illinois. We hosted 230 students and 30 adult volunteers. Students submitted presentation proposals in January. We had 41 students brave enough to present on a topic that they were passionate about. These students stood up alone or in groups of up to 3 and presented to their peers. The sessions covered a wide variety of topics from writing a blog, or using a math app called Prodigy, to coding and robotics. There were 6 break out style sessions and some kids even offered to present twice. Kids 8 to 18 had to keep the audience's attention for 25 minutes! 

@Natalier852 presenting on Touchcast app. She is amazing! 

Answering questions from the crowd

It was one of the best days of my 26 year teaching career.

All about coding!

The committee worked hard to make sure every student had a good experience.  My job was to touch base with the Berwyn South students a few days before the conference to make sure that their presentations were ready.  As you can expect there was a wide variety in their comfort level. I had some students texting me, and emailing me the night before with last minute questions. I loved the commitment that they showed to making their presentation the best it could be!

One of our youngest presenters!

We prepped for the conference Thursday night with a meeting of the committee. On Friday night we put up the signs and prepared the rooms. On Saturday morning we got there early to make sure everything was ready to go. 
 

Freedom Middle School students presenting on coding Dash & Dot

Our keynote speakers were Mitchell Brown and Scotty Vrablik, creators of Clean Minecraft Videos, both 8th graders. They explained how they set out to solve the problem of too much inappropriate language in Minecraft videos on the web. They created their own app and their own site. They now curate minecraft videos from all over the web. Their story was inspiring.
This is a perfect example of what we want kids to do all the time - solve problems, think globally, share with the world! 

 

Listening intently to our keynoters

The breakout sessions started and I went to check on all the presenters. It was great to see rooms full of kids all listening intently to their peers present. We put an adult volunteer in each room as a monitor. They were hardly needed. The room monitors dealt with some technical difficulties, and they were the time keepers. The room also had the student's adult sponsor. Each child needs a sponsor to attend. 

8 y/o presenters! So proud of them!

During lunch the students were engaged with each other and their devices. We found 1 student taking pics of his lunch in order to make a stop motion video later! Genius! And as you can see from the picture below, they were all still acting like kids too! 

We set up a green screen room and a maker space for students who had some down time or were interested in creating. They did some amazing things. We had Osmo, Makey Makey, Color Alive (augmented reality), and Sphero in the Maker room. We had Play-Doh, Legos and two green screens in the Green Screen room. There was a Splinker room and a Breakout Edu room too!

Green Screening

Makey, Makey

Sink & float - has to be just right!

Breakout Edu

Finally, thanks to our generous sponsors almost every child walked away with something. We were able to give away 40 Google Cardboards due to the generosity of one of our parents who also happens to work for Google Chicago. 

Google Cardboard

 

So many choices for prizes!

Our big winner received a drone

If you live in Illinois and are interested in bring the SIT conference to your district go to the website for more information. This conference is organized by Illinois State University, Heartland College, and State Farm Insurance. This model could be done anywhere.

 A few more pictures from the day. 

5th grade presenters! 

Me Periscoping and my colleague Michelle Tweeting

iPadpaloozaIN 2016

My summer started out with a trip to Noblesville, Indiana for iPadpaloozaIN 2016 or #iplzain16 (on Twitter). I like this conference because it is a small regional conference that reminds me a lot of iEngage-Berwyn. It gets big name speakers because of its affiliation with the iPadpalooza brand!

Me chatting with Drew & Brad before their keynote

 

 

 

The day started with a keynote from my favorite keynote team - +Drew Minock and +Brad Waid. They made us laugh, they made us cry and they gave stuff away. What more could you ask for in a keynote?! Their theme was - relationships matter.  This really resonated with me this year since I did my entire end of the year reflection with my team about how relationships should be at the base of all the things we do in education. This picture is funny, because I was up on stage last year with +Carl Hooker during his keynote. I have to find a way to get up on stage again next year. 

 During the keynote I sat with +Kristin Ziemke and +Don Goble.  I met Kristin a few months ago at a Bright Bytes event, and Don is a friend of hers. They are both Apple Distinguished Educators and good friends. I could tell from sitting between them. 

I presented during the 1st break out session. I did one of my favorite presentations. It is called Tech Coach Therapy. I talk about the Berwyn South model of coaching, and then encourage all of the participants to discuss 4 questions and connect with each other. Being a coach can be a lonely or isolating job. Many times coaches do not have anyone to bounce ideas off of, and colleagues think that coaches are administrators, when in fact the majority are still in the teacher's contract. I really enjoy helping coaches from across different districts connect. There is real power in telling your story when you are a coach. We can all learn so much from just listening to each other. I ask the coaches to put their contact information into a Google form and then I share the response spreadsheet with everyone, so that they can follow each other and keep the conversations going.

One of two groups of teachers telling their story. 

One thing that made me feel really good was that Kristin told me that she heard a group of teachers talking about how beneficial my session was for them.  My second session was a new one for me. I did a session on using +TouchCast for getting students to demonstrate their thinking and understanding. I was glad to practice on a smaller audience. The session started with about 15 people in it, but by the end there were only 4. I think the main reason for this was because my session was a 2 hour workshop but there were 1 hour workshops that started 1/2 way through my session. Quite a few of the attendees excused themselves to go to another session. I left a lot of work time, so I think a few people played a little and then tried to make it to at least one more session. I was a little disappointed that everyone did not stay for the entire session, but I understand that everyone needs to go where they grow.  There is an art to maximizing your time at any ed tech conference that has breakout sessions. 

Touchcast is a great iOS app for all classrooms and all types of educators. If you have never tried this free app - download it HERE. Refer to this blog post on 1 way to use Touchcast in the classroom.

I had to get home to my family, so I was not able to stay for day 2 to be a learner. I was bummed because I missed all three of Kristin Ziemke's sessions.


Hats off to the IpadpaloozaIN crew. They did another amazing job organizing this conference. I can't wait for next year. If you are free in June and looking for a great setting for an ed tech conference this is the place for you.

BigTime Blogging Challenge 2016 Day 1 - Farley's Currently

I'm so excited to be participating in the BigTime Blogging Challenge for 2016. Thanks to +MIchelle Brezek for the inspiration to write every day. I hope that I can do it for all 31 days. I have never been much of a writer, but it is import for teacher to practice their craft if they are going to encourage students to do it and in my case other teachers. Reflection is so important, as well. Ok, here we go! 

We are doing Farley's Currently format for our first post. An ode to one of Michelle's favorite bloggers. I am going to share what I am currently listening, loving, thinking, wanting, needing, and hoping.

Listening to the rain delay for the Chicago Cubs v New York Mets game. That's why I decided to blog now instead of later after the game. I am a huge Cubs fan. I am so excited about how they are playing this year. I really enjoy sitting down and watching the games this year. They are so fun to watch. I think they will go deep into the play-offs. No one is saying anything more than that because we don't want to jinx it.

Loving being home! I have been on the road presenting at ed tech conference 12 out of the last 19 days in days in June. Home is where the heart is and where my kids are. Even though they are older I missed them a lot. It takes a lot of restraint not to buy them countless souvenirs when I am traveling. My garden is my sanctuary. I have spent the last 4 years putting it together and it is finally the way I want it! I like to sit out there to read and listen to music and relax. I often fall asleep while reading on my patio. 

Thinking about my Aunt Lu and the impact that she had on the lives of the people around her. She passed away earlier this month. Today was the memorial service. It was a reminder of how we all touch peoples lives in countless ways that we do not even realize. When I was in Brighton, England on an exchange program through Illinois State University during my junior year of college she sent me a card once a week with $5 in it. I knew that no matter what, I could count on a little extra spending money each week while I was there. She was an amazing woman who raised 6 kids on her own after my uncle passed away suddenly in 1977. 

Wanting to get more organized this summer. I made a huge dent earlier this month by taking a whole car load of things to Goodwill. I need to make one more pass through the house and then get my self on Pinterest and to The Container Store. 

Needing to get more exercise on a regular basis. I feel so good when I do. I just need to get in the habit again. The Sworkit app has helped to get me started, especially when I don't want to go to the gym. If you haven't tried it, you should. 

Hoping people will get engaged in the political process and tell their state and federal representatives to work for stricter gun laws and better mental health care. It is not about the Second Amendment people! It is about money! Anybody that thinks differently is delusional. Praying after a tragedy isn't working to prevent the next one. Be proactive - engage with your lawmakers! Also there is no way that Thomas Jefferson and company could have foreseen assault rifles that are designed to fire dozens of rounds in seconds. Watch this video. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/12/the-gun-used-in-the-orlando-shooting-is-becoming-mass-shooters-weapon-of-choice 

I have lots of reflecting to do about all of the presentations that I did, people I met and things that I learned over the last 3 weeks. Stay tuned for more!