#ISTE2014 Days 3-4: Gamification, culturally responsive technology, GOOGLE

I'm going to start this post of by saying,

Like probably way more than is healthy... So, here's the rest of my recap from ISTE 2014.

Day 3

Awful photography skillz evidence - I don't get  badge for that.
BUT Liz looks awesome... and is being awesome!

On Day 3 at ISTE I woke up to a roommate (aka Liz Wiggs) running through her session which inspired me to apply to present about blogging at NCSTA's conference. The problem is that presenting makes me want hide under a rock... I headed over to the convention center and wandered around in the expo hall. I got truffles and a trial membership from PD360 (super passionate people and great resources!) and talked to people at Google (I want to marry Google. Like, it's bad. BUT REALLY.) Then, I went to a session on the Digital Promise which is a new platform for PD based on microcredentials and badging - kind of like the session from Day 2 applied. The organization is also starting an award program called DILA with EdSurge. I have some people in mind who I'd like to nominate... Then, I got to use my

Liz's best friend who she tried to kill.
THANKS Rodney!

horrendous videography and photography skills to help out in Liz Wiggs' BYOD session on "Authentic writing, effective feedback, and happy students." What was great to see was all the happy teachers! Then I dragged Liz to the expo hall where we (not at all creepily) stalked Jaime Casap, an Educational Evangelist for Google. You can find his talk from NC New Schools Project training below - which based on the CRAZYNESS happening on Twitter from his talk at ISTE was pretty similar. Then I wrote our AVID Site Plan (WOOT!) and we had a celebration/sob fest about presentations and the resignation of our AWESOME chemistry teacher and competition clubs director (aka king or something like that). We rode elevators in all the cool hotels in Atlanta!

Day 4

BEST DONUT EVER! #vegan #local #revolutiondonut

FINAL DAY of ISTE! After a VERY slow morning, I wandered around tables and learned about the Book Creator app. Then I went to an AMAZING session by Philip Vinogradov on gamification. I'd had this scary misconception that I needed to be able to play and make and program and code and be awesome at video games to gamify my classroom. Philip's session showed me that gamification is WAY less scary, way more aligned with UbD, AVID, and NCNSP than I thought!!!! SO, now I'm gonna gamify all the things!!!! WOOT! Or, well, start with ONE unit! I JUST LOVE that Philip does his gamified quests in Google! When a student is ready for the next quest/level/journey, he shares the next view only Google folder with them! BAHHH! I also love his testing policy where students sign up to test! I cannot WAIT for NCCAT next week - I think my goal will be to gamify a unit to see how it goes. Philip's prezi with links to AWESOMESAUCE resources is below :-).

After that session, I went to one on Culturally Responsive Technologies which I had to leave from early so we could get home to Sanford but what I was there for seemed neat. 

The best part of the trip home was definitely stopping at Revolution Donuts. AHHHHH FIRST DONUT IN 7 YEARSSSSS! NOMSSSSSSSS. I ate three...