TeachMeet KY Learning Takeaways

Finally the day came yesterday for me, the opportunity to experience my first unconference type gathering. Will King (@wkingbg) and Allen Martin (@AlsTechTime), both whom I met at ISTE, invited me to crash their Bowling Green school district Teach Meet. As I followed their keynote speaker, Adam Taylor (@2footgiraffe), from Nashville, TN to Bowling Green, KY, I wondered if the event would seem awkward given that I was not a Bowling Green public school teacher. However when I walked into the Bowling Green High School, I was pleasantly surprised not to experience a moment of awkwardness. Actually quite the opposite happened, the teachers were so kind and welcoming. Our shared passion for learning and teaching completely blurred the fact that I was not a teacher in their district.

The Newscasts for Any Classroom was a wonderful session. Janet Martin walked us through the steps of setting up and implementing the project. Working in groups, students would learn how to plan and write/storyboard a segment of a newscast. The newscast would include a lead story, other stories, weather, commercials, traffic, etc. The integrated tech piece involved using iMovie to film and edit their production. I am going to attempt to use this idea with my explorer unit. So instead of individually presenting one by one about their explorers, groups of explorers will create one newscast. I can only imagine the creative student productions that will transpire!  Janet's SlideRocket presentation can be found at www.tinyurl.com/TMnewscast. As part of her resources, Janet also shared this great clip on storyboarding to show students.

As I walked out of the newscast session, Kim Calhoun (@CalhounDOwork), a 9th grade history teacher, approached me about some cool ideas she had in her classroom.  In her classroom, she began pulling amazing student projects out of a box. At the moment, the cardboard boxes seemed more like treasure boxes to me. Kim had her students create War World II poster foldables. I immediately started to think of the different ways I could use her ideas with my own students. She generously gave me a sample to take with me. I now plan on using foldables with my American Revolution unit. I keep hearing and reading that "learning should be a hot mess." Well, nothing screams "hot mess" more than a classroom full of students with paper, scissors and glue!

          

Infographics is a tool I have not yet used, but I totally see the platform as an opportunity for students to effectively show their understanding. So, I was pleased to learn the basics from Will King's session on how to help kids sort and organize data. I loved the simplicity and visually appealing graphics of this image Will shared with us.

I plan to use this tool early on in the school year as a culminating geography unit project. I am leaning toward using http://www.easel.ly/ which is still on my summer learning "to do" list.

Adam Taylor's session on engaging students with technology was full of practical and easy to use tools. I was particularly glad to get a Socrative overview since I plan on using this assessment tool with my students this year.

As I left the session of how to embed Web 2.0 tools into a web page, Ms. McCoy, took me to a back room to show me their green screen. I was amazed, I wish we had this set up at our school. I was completely impressed by how cleverly an iPad box, an 8 x 10 frame glass, and velcro became a stand/holder for an iPad to film productions.

Overall, my first Teach Meet was a day full of learning, a total success. I can't wait for my next unconference. Now I understand the excitement that runs through Twitter as people tweet about the unconference craze.

Learner's High, Who Knew!

After spending a year on Twitter reading posts and blogs, I am finally ready to join the blogger world. It is not that I don't appreciate the power of reflection and sharing, I just felt like blogging would be yet another "to do" item on my ever growing list. I also thought I really did not have much to say that has not already been or would be said through my remarkable PLN's blogs. However, I've come to realize that blogging needs to be more about my own reflections as an evolving educator. It's a personal journey, but if I can contribute or inspire others to try something new, it's an added bonus!

This is such an exciting time in education. In the past year, there has not been a day I have not learned something new or have been willing to jump outside of my comfort zone. As I take more risks, it seems like I crave more challenges. I use to be an avid runner and would push myself until I experienced a 'runner's high.' Honestly, I felt like I could run forever. Well since having my third child and years of wear and tear on my body, I can no longer run. I never thought I would be able to reach the incredible 'runner's high' feeling until I jumped on the tech ed learning wave. There is something about being totally consumed with learning and reaching that 'eureka moment' that sends me into a superhero mode and fuels my motivation for the next challenge.  Who knew that there was such a thing as a 'learner's high!'  Yes, I've become a learner junkie. My hope is to lead my students in a couple of weeks on discovering their own 'learner's high' experiences.