- My house did not flood in Harvey- my grandmother's house on Lake Houston flooded but we managed to salvage all the old family photos and some of the heirlooms from the property
- My school did not get flooded- we did have some water leak in through the roof, but no major damage; some students lost everything and I had a former student email me checking up on us and his house flooded
- I finally managed to get back into the swing of things with my students and the 1st 9 weeks will be over soon
- I went to a staff development on Friday and that wasn't so exciting
- Saturday I went to a technology conference and that's what has me so excited today!!!!
It was such an amazing conference and I learned plenty of new things that I'm going to have to play around with so I can let you guys know about them.
The conference I went to was TCCA which is Technology and Curriculum Conference of Aldine ISD its a partnership Aldine has with TECA. They put this FREE conference every year and it's open to the public. There were people there from Aldine, New Caney, Tomball, Klien, Alief, Humble and so many other places.
The keynote was given by Rafranz Davis who is the Director for Professional and Digital Learning for Lufkin ISD. I did miss the first part of her speaking, but the rest of her talk was very interesting. My favorite part was when she talked about how technology was creates equal access for people. We don't all have the same opportunities to get to places, but we all have access to the same internet. You can connect and learn more about Ms. Davis on twitter at @rafranzdavis.
After the keynote there were 5 different sessions that you could attend. The first one that I went to was Kid's Deserve It with Todd Nesloney @techninjatodd. I'd heard him talk before when I was in college, because A&M asked him to come and talk to all of us teachers before we headed out for student teaching, and that was before he published his book. He talked a lot about how he integrates technology into his elementary school. The main idea that I walked away with was that we can't teach kids the way we were taught. Just because it was good enough for us doesn't mean it's good enough for them. If we want to get them ready for the future then we have to train them differently than we were trained. I really liked his presentation and I would recommend reading his book. I did take a selfie with him, but it was on the fly for a scavenger hunt (which I'll talk about later) and so it didn't turn out so great so I shall not be posting it again.
My next session was with Sandra Menxueiro @menxueiro who is the Lead Learner (or principal in layman's terms) at Dogan Elementary. Her session was about Twitter, which I promise I will write a post about eventually, it's on my to do list! I loved her enthusiasm. She's the new Lead Learner at Dogan and it's her job to turn around the school this year. One of the changes she's implemented is having all staff use Twitter. She was very honest with us and she told us about the resistance that she's had with some of her teachers, and how she's powering through with them. One of the things she said that stuck with me is that Twitter is a fire hose, and it really is. There is so much information out there on Twitter that you can get lost for days just trying to find something specific. Which is why she stressed the importance of using hashtags (which I'll get into at a later date). But I have to give a shout out to #DoganNation
Session 3 I found a little group talking about ways to use technology to communicate with parents. Now this really appealed to me, because I hate calling parents. I have no shame in saying that. Also I feel bad because there is a large percentage of my parents who don't speak English, and I hate having to ask the ladies in the front office to translate a phone call for me because they have other things they could be doing. SOOO the lady (who's name I should have written down but I did not :/) talked about Remind (which is also on my to do list) and Seesaw (which I have already written about!). Most people know about Remind, but I didn't know that they have a translate feature, which I'm really excited about! I'm definitely going to be getting parents to sign up for my new Remind class at Open House this week! An update to my Seesaw post is that they have a parent connect feature that allows parents to see their child's work which can also allow you to communicate with parents, so another plus for Seesaw!
I know I haven't talked about it yet, but Aldine has started to put in Promethean Boards in their classrooms. My school is already set up and ready to go. I've played around with mine a little, but one of the sessions was about the basics of how to use the board, so I made sure I got there! The presenter (who I can only remember his first name of Paul) was using the latest version of the software so of course he was able to do the coolest things with it, but even still there's plenty of cool things I want to share with you guys! So Promethean's software used to be Activinspire, but they have since done away with that and now they use Classflow. There are two ways to use Classflow, online or download the desktop version. I still have to play around with these two, but rest assured that they will be included in later blog posts! Oh, BTW completely free to use!!!!
Last session was kind of thrown together at the last minute because the presenter cancelled 20 minutes before the session started so the Technology Specialists from Aldine had to rush to get a session together and they really did a great job! It was a mix of Google Classroom and Schoology. Now I've used Schoology as a 'student' because that's the site that they use for all of our online professional developments, but I've never used it as a teacher. I have no experience with Google Classroom, so I'm going to have to play around with both of these before I'm able to make a definitive statement on which one I want to use in the future (but I can tell you I'm leaning towards Schoology because they will let you integrate Google Docs into your assigned lessons).
Of course it wouldn't be a conference without the vendor floor. This year they did things a little differently. If you were able to get 10 different vendors to sign off on a special sheet that they gave you, you could earn a bonus Professional Development hour! That's right, instead of only getting 6 hours, I was able to earn 7 (1 for keynote, 5 sessions, and 1 for visiting vendors)!!!! Plus it's always fun to go and talk to the people to get your yearly supply of pens and sticky notes lol!
One thing that they did to keep the fun going in between sessions was to start a scavenger hunt. I've used a few different scavenger hunt apps, but the one that they had us use was GooseChase. I love this app! You can lock the different hunts with passwords to keep out people you don't want joining in. Instead of just having hunters go to locations and answer questions, this app lets you take pictures or videos of certain tasks that you want them to complete. You can also take those photos and videos and upload them straight to Twitter and Facebook (which I did). If you're using it as a teacher, make sure you do GooseChase EDU for better deals and pricing. I am a little sore about the results of the scavenger hunt, because I didn't win :( but there were just soooooooo many things that you had to do that were not introvert friendly! I had to go up to so many people I've never met before and get them to high five me, connect on social media, get interviewed on Aldine Broadcast, and a lot of other things. Even with all that though, it was still a great idea to incorporate into the conference.
Overall I had such a great time and I can't wait to go back next year! I highly recommend this conference to any teacher who wants to learn more about the different technologies that are available to them. Plus the $17,000 in door prizes they give away make it even better!
The keynote was given by Rafranz Davis who is the Director for Professional and Digital Learning for Lufkin ISD. I did miss the first part of her speaking, but the rest of her talk was very interesting. My favorite part was when she talked about how technology was creates equal access for people. We don't all have the same opportunities to get to places, but we all have access to the same internet. You can connect and learn more about Ms. Davis on twitter at @rafranzdavis.After the keynote there were 5 different sessions that you could attend. The first one that I went to was Kid's Deserve It with Todd Nesloney @techninjatodd. I'd heard him talk before when I was in college, because A&M asked him to come and talk to all of us teachers before we headed out for student teaching, and that was before he published his book. He talked a lot about how he integrates technology into his elementary school. The main idea that I walked away with was that we can't teach kids the way we were taught. Just because it was good enough for us doesn't mean it's good enough for them. If we want to get them ready for the future then we have to train them differently than we were trained. I really liked his presentation and I would recommend reading his book. I did take a selfie with him, but it was on the fly for a scavenger hunt (which I'll talk about later) and so it didn't turn out so great so I shall not be posting it again.
My next session was with Sandra Menxueiro @menxueiro who is the Lead Learner (or principal in layman's terms) at Dogan Elementary. Her session was about Twitter, which I promise I will write a post about eventually, it's on my to do list! I loved her enthusiasm. She's the new Lead Learner at Dogan and it's her job to turn around the school this year. One of the changes she's implemented is having all staff use Twitter. She was very honest with us and she told us about the resistance that she's had with some of her teachers, and how she's powering through with them. One of the things she said that stuck with me is that Twitter is a fire hose, and it really is. There is so much information out there on Twitter that you can get lost for days just trying to find something specific. Which is why she stressed the importance of using hashtags (which I'll get into at a later date). But I have to give a shout out to #DoganNation
Session 3 I found a little group talking about ways to use technology to communicate with parents. Now this really appealed to me, because I hate calling parents. I have no shame in saying that. Also I feel bad because there is a large percentage of my parents who don't speak English, and I hate having to ask the ladies in the front office to translate a phone call for me because they have other things they could be doing. SOOO the lady (who's name I should have written down but I did not :/) talked about Remind (which is also on my to do list) and Seesaw (which I have already written about!). Most people know about Remind, but I didn't know that they have a translate feature, which I'm really excited about! I'm definitely going to be getting parents to sign up for my new Remind class at Open House this week! An update to my Seesaw post is that they have a parent connect feature that allows parents to see their child's work which can also allow you to communicate with parents, so another plus for Seesaw!
I know I haven't talked about it yet, but Aldine has started to put in Promethean Boards in their classrooms. My school is already set up and ready to go. I've played around with mine a little, but one of the sessions was about the basics of how to use the board, so I made sure I got there! The presenter (who I can only remember his first name of Paul) was using the latest version of the software so of course he was able to do the coolest things with it, but even still there's plenty of cool things I want to share with you guys! So Promethean's software used to be Activinspire, but they have since done away with that and now they use Classflow. There are two ways to use Classflow, online or download the desktop version. I still have to play around with these two, but rest assured that they will be included in later blog posts! Oh, BTW completely free to use!!!!
Last session was kind of thrown together at the last minute because the presenter cancelled 20 minutes before the session started so the Technology Specialists from Aldine had to rush to get a session together and they really did a great job! It was a mix of Google Classroom and Schoology. Now I've used Schoology as a 'student' because that's the site that they use for all of our online professional developments, but I've never used it as a teacher. I have no experience with Google Classroom, so I'm going to have to play around with both of these before I'm able to make a definitive statement on which one I want to use in the future (but I can tell you I'm leaning towards Schoology because they will let you integrate Google Docs into your assigned lessons).
Of course it wouldn't be a conference without the vendor floor. This year they did things a little differently. If you were able to get 10 different vendors to sign off on a special sheet that they gave you, you could earn a bonus Professional Development hour! That's right, instead of only getting 6 hours, I was able to earn 7 (1 for keynote, 5 sessions, and 1 for visiting vendors)!!!! Plus it's always fun to go and talk to the people to get your yearly supply of pens and sticky notes lol!
One thing that they did to keep the fun going in between sessions was to start a scavenger hunt. I've used a few different scavenger hunt apps, but the one that they had us use was GooseChase. I love this app! You can lock the different hunts with passwords to keep out people you don't want joining in. Instead of just having hunters go to locations and answer questions, this app lets you take pictures or videos of certain tasks that you want them to complete. You can also take those photos and videos and upload them straight to Twitter and Facebook (which I did). If you're using it as a teacher, make sure you do GooseChase EDU for better deals and pricing. I am a little sore about the results of the scavenger hunt, because I didn't win :( but there were just soooooooo many things that you had to do that were not introvert friendly! I had to go up to so many people I've never met before and get them to high five me, connect on social media, get interviewed on Aldine Broadcast, and a lot of other things. Even with all that though, it was still a great idea to incorporate into the conference.
Overall I had such a great time and I can't wait to go back next year! I highly recommend this conference to any teacher who wants to learn more about the different technologies that are available to them. Plus the $17,000 in door prizes they give away make it even better!
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