PD

Geeking Out at #CUE15

/ Catherine Cabiness-Atkinson, Ed.D. / Leave a comment

If you’re looking for a place to recharge and reconnect, the CUE Annual Conference is the place to be.  Like last year, I had a blast!  It was great to meet new techies colleagues, reconnect with old ones, and share the triumphs and pitfalls of technology integration in the classroom.

This year’s offerings were larger than the last.  There were SOOOO many workshops and not enough time.  In fact, when I set up my Sched, I actually booked two to three workshops for each time period so that if one room was full, I had backup options.  And believe me when I say that I’m thankful for those backup options!

My take-aways from these past few days include…

  • Interest-based learning –> “What matters to you, matters!” – Glenn Warren
  • Voxer is a means to connect & collaborate
  • Finding the citation for an image taken from the Internet is quite easy
  • Bring humor into the situation when someone asks a question that is Googleable (yes, I know that is probably not a word) –> lmgtfy.com
Though this type of conference can be taxing on the mind (there is so much to remember and process…), it was totally worth it when one factors in the relationships built over shared triumphs and frustrations when integrating technology into the curriculum and PD. I left Palm Springs this morning with a heavy heart because I know that I have to wait a full year for the next CUE conference.  Having said that, I am confident that the connections made this past weekend will continue to grow as we reach out to each over over Twittersphere…and perhaps maybe Voxer.  😉

Tech PD Marathon, Done.

/ Catherine Cabiness-Atkinson, Ed.D. / Leave a comment
Today marked the end of a marathon technology professional development week (for me)…with one more day for a couple of our teams.  Eight technology sessions ranging from Google Basics all the way to Power of the LMS, done…with one specific session devoted to Digital Literacy in the History Classroom (my personal fave).  The technology team (@ggusd712tech) at my district worked for two weeks during the summer, planning, revising, talking, rehashing all of the things that we thought would make a successful PD workshop for teachers eager to learn how to effectively and efficiently integrate technology into their classroom.
The range of attendees were from complete newbies to experienced tech-users.  It was my goal that teachers would leave our session with at least one thing they could apply to their classroom.  The feedback (both on the eval/GoogleForm and F2F) was positive.  So I think we may have hit our mark there!  =D
Now the true test will be…will the teachers be able to integrate one new technology tool?  The other test?  Can our district provide on-going PD to support their learning?  I will be anxiously awaiting the results…
I hope that these sessions start the crucial conversations that teachers and administrators need to have in order for us to move more fully into the 21st century learning environment…because we need those conversations and 1:1 access for every student.  It’s not too much to ask, is it?  

#EdCampHOME – Best.PD.ever.

/ Catherine Cabiness-Atkinson, Ed.D. / 3 Comments

Still riding the high from attending EdCampHOME 3.0.  I lurked during my first one…meaning, I basically followed the conversation via Google on Air.  But this time around, I wanted to participate.  The problem?  I would have to be on video.  Argh!  I hate being on video.  But I had to get out of my comfort zone and just deal with it.

I practiced setting up a Google+ Hangout (with myself – I know how that sounds, but it wasn’t weird…well, it wasn’t too weird anyway) and I played around with the add-ons.  I shifted my laptop around on my desk to figure out the best position so that my face wasn’t in a shadow and so that participants couldn’t see my mess of an office.  But I digress.  And then I decided to add the Lower Third (per @davidtedu).  Much to my surprise, the text was backwards.  Really?!?!  Well, I’m not one to shy away from clicking around so I figured out how flip the screen so that the text was readable, but then to my dismay I discovered that my camera was no longer a mirror of my actions.  It had flipped me too!  Boy, you want to talk about mind games.  I am a visual learner.  I’m very good at spatial everything.  But trying to figure out the mirror/reverse on the camera threw me for a loop.  I left a feeble message in our G+ group and was happy to discover that there were people so willing and able to help.  Two people created visuals for me.  Well, not exactly for me.  But I felt like it was for me.  =)  I totally appreciated it.  A shout out and HUGE thanks to @DAliceMarsh and @2footgiraffe!

When I finally got into the first session, the non-mirrored view of myself was not a problem.  In fact, I didn’t even really see myself because I was always small on the screen.  Thank GOD!  I don’t think I could have concentrated on the conversation at hand if I was face to face with my face really large on the screen.  But it was ridiculous.  I had two laptops and my iPad on my desk and I was trying to follow the feed on Twitter as well as take notes.  Talk about multi-tasking.  It may have looked like (to the participants) that I wasn’t paying attention, but I was.  I totally was.  Copious notes.  =)

The first session was great.  In previous Twitter chats, there was discussion about using students to help deliver PD…so naturally I wanted to learn more.  At the end of the school year, I had a couple of NJHS students create tutorials on how to use Edmodo and MyBigCampus.  I was thinking that I could put those on my class website for next year.  I mean, what better way to learn than from peers?  With little direction, my five students did an awesome job!  And…they earned community service hours for it.  Bonus!  I’m thinking that I can tap that resource to help with PD for this coming school year.  But more importantly, I’m thinking that I could use a few of them to help out at our Staff Development Day in August.  And the wheels are turning…

My second session was almost a bust.  I soooooo wanted to attend the Genius Hour session to hear about how people were implementing GH in their classrooms.  But after about 20 minutes and no help on that end…I saw a tweet from @SLOKevin about there being room in their GHO on hosting/preparing for an EdCamp.  I jumped all over that because that was one of my four votes for this EdCamp anyway.  Though I missed out on the previous 20 minutes, luckily all sessions were recorded so I plan to review the conversation at a later date.  I already set up a GoogleDoc with information on setting up and hosting an EdCamp for our district.  I shared the EdCamp info with our new Director of Technology and another fellow tech-geek.  So hopefully I’ll be able to tweet that our district is finally joining the EdCamp movement.  =)

I see a lot of value in EdCamps.  It’s informal, it’s democratic, it’s collaborative…and boy, is it informative.  What’s not to love about FREE PD with like-minded educators?