#ISTE2014 Days 1-2: Self-Care, SAMR, and massive crowds and burritos

I'm at ISTE 2014 in Atlanta!!!

Disclaimer: If you just want some potentially useful resources, just read Day 2 :-)

Day 1

The conference kicked off with a 6.5 hour drive, good music, and a super smooth registration sign up intermixed with running around like crazy trying to enter in secret codes from the ISTE 2014 networking game... :-).

I was immediately inspired by some wonderful ladies at the Future Friendly Schools table. They let me take 5000 free things including the postcards that I'm going to give my Art Showcase kiddos for inspiration. Future Friendly Schools is a part of TakingITGlobal which has awesome PD and resources that I fully intend on using in AVID and Earth and Environmental Science (including an AWESOME app that I want my students to use for a semester long project on sustainable choices--which I think might augment the lowtech version we'd been doing... #SAMR).

Ashley Judd's opening session was refreshing - it was basically like being at yoga teacher training again... :-). Also, I'm totally going to start wearing orchids in my hair...

ISTE 2014 has 18,000 attendees which led to some brief paranoia about "what if there was a fire" and other dumb scenarios that are really NOT beneficial to entertain when you are in this:

Day 2

Liz Wiggs (rapper name/twitter handle @e_wiggy) and I kicked off the morning at an AMAZING session, "Learning, technology, and the SAMR model: Goals, processes, and practices" with Ruben Puentedura. This session was pretty mind-blowing and left me with lots to think about. Dr. Puentedura used the analogy of looking for a resource-rich valley to desribe how technology can be used with purpose in the classroom. 

After the AVID conference and after discussions with my tech-savvy students, I've been contemplating the value of taking notes by hand or on the computer.

I've also re-confirmed that the Cornell note process is pretty invaluable because without it, I manage to forget ALL THE THINGS.

Gotta have it all! Especially the content and pedagogical knowledge :-)

Resources: 

• AWESOME article called "The pen is mightier than the keyboard" that I need to finish reading...
• Mueller and Oppenheimer suggest that the problem with typed notes is that students skip the processing part of note-taking
• My ideas for taking and making notes in the Cornell way on a computer are here.



Not a good photographer... AT ALL

• Ruben Puentedura's site.

After that session, I got inspired by Adam Bellow to take my first selfie ever and slow down in the classroom so students have time to take concepts and technology and create actually useful, authentic products to synthesize what they've learned. I also went twitter crazy and stalkerly followed EVERY person Mr. Bellow suggested. #developingmyPLN #awesomesauce

Resources:

• Adam Bellow's site "eduTeacher"
• Edcamp.org
• Student film festival
• JUST ALL THINGS TWITTER! ("Twitter was like the faculty lounge we didn't have" or something along those lines...)
• pixelpress...SOUNDS AWESOME!
• 81Dash
• This video...made me cry. And I didn't cry from The Fault in our Stars OR the 7th Harry Potter:

Then, I crammed a massive burrito bowl down my throat in a session about taking tech schoolwide. And now it's time to wander.

And remember being "just" a teacher means you make a whole lot of impact :-)

The summer so far...

Hey! Welcome to my non-classroom blog on all the random thoughts and experiences I have as a beginning teacher!!!

In May I finished my first full year of teaching. It was a year full of trying to do all the things, blogging all the lesson plans (my baby/first blog is here), letting myself (sometimes accidentally) fail (First Attempt In Learning) and reflect, and benefiting from the support of the AMAZING faculty and administration I work with at Lee Early College in Sanford, NC. It was truly a year of wonderful opportunities - I attended NC New Schools New Teacher Institute, AVID Path Training, and Scaling STEM. I led clubs and became a PLC leader. SO, it was a whirlwind which was well-celebrated with an awesome brownie on the last day of school before I headed out to the mountains to take Climate Change Ecology at Highlands Biological Station.

Local strawberries + coconut ice cream + chocolate +
the coolest candle on Earth =
Best celebration ever 

Hunting for moths which are a proxy for air pollution.
We didn't have many moths at this point :-).

Two days after the school year ended, I drove up to Highlands, NC where I was fortunate to take Climate Change Ecology with professors who let me turn my papers into blog posts I could use in my classroom. I got to be engaged in real scientific research that will provide baseline data as scientists study how climate is changing and the role humans play in these changes.

After finishing the course, I slept for a week (and ate chocolate from the French Broad Chocolate Lounge which is DEFINITELY relevant to resilience as a teacher... and went to LOTS of yoga classes). Then, I worked with Elizabeth Wiggs and a bunch of other great teachers from our district to train teachers in Understanding by Design. I led a session on Essential Questions and another on how to use UbD posters in the classroom (#transparency). It was reengerizing to work with teachers who were SO excited to enhance their classroom teaching! I learned a lot from working with them!!! Lee County Schools rocks!

Then, I went to the AVID Summer Institute at Dallas with the best team of teachers ever! Despite thunderstorms, no Wifi (whattt????), and the constant battle with summer burnout, we got SO much done! We are well on our way to implementing AVID with fidelity at LEC! #truthisnotanattitude #theCornellway

A major take away from conferences and professional development so far is that we teachers love stickers and coloring and toffee...

Practicing our Cornell notetaking...