My excitement is building for ISTE 2918!

I have not blogged in several years for many reasons, family, job, etc.  However, I decided I need to return because I enjoy sharing what I learn with others and what a great time to start over is with ISTE!  

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend NCEA this year in Cincinnati and I have to tell you it was truly amazing and the amount of new knowledge I walked away with was incredible however it was over Easter break and it wasn't the time to start my blog again.

So my goal is going to be to blog at least twice during ISTE!  Would I love to set the goal to blog everyday of ISTE? YES!  But I think I am setting a goal which is unrealistic. 

I hope you follow and find out about my incredible journey at ISTE and back into blogging!

PETE&C Pre-Conference Day of Discovery!

Wow!  What a wonderful day of Discovery!  I look forward to Discovery Education offering a wonderful pre-conference day at Pete & C each year.  I have never attended Pete & C but after this year I decided I am not missing it next year!

The opening presentation was a collaboration demonstration by Hall Davison, Lance Rougeux, and Steve Dembo.  They talked about how we need to look at the 22^nd Century because many schools are surpassing the 21^st Century.   One great app they talked about was “Life of George” created by Legos.  It’s an amazing app and you will want to check out for your classroom!  I left their presentation excited about the rest of the day!

The first session I attended was the Collective Brain given by Lance Rougeux.  He showed us many fabulous websites that would be a wonderful resource in our classroom, such as http://www.yasiv.com  (Amazon’s Product Visualization) and http://agoogleaday.com, which asks a question a day.  Great ideas!

The second session was iThink iNeed iPads in my Classroom presented by Steve Dembo.  Steve showed us many amazing apps along with Apple TV.  He showed us how beneficial it was to have Apple TV in our classroom if you are using iPads.  It was amazing to show our favorite apps by displaying our iPad on the screen.

After lunch there was a DEN Star Showcase. I had the great privilege to share Web 2.0 Tools, which I love.  It was called Beyond the Classroom Walls.  I met so many wonderful people and had the opportunity to share all the wonderful things that are taking place in my school.

My final session of the day was learning about Scratch. Scratch is a great downloadable package to teach programing.   I remember programming years ago and it seem like you wrote a hundred lines to have Hello come up on your screen.  I am so excited that teachers are still teaching it because I think it is important that students understand have programs work.

Once again, it was a fun-filled and educational day.  Reed Timmer, Discovery Education Meteorologist, made a guest appearance today! WOW!  That was awesome!

Overall it was a great day of learning! Can’t wait for the next one!

New Year's Resolutions 2012

Now that we have officially welcomed 2012, it is time to look at my New Year’s Resolutions.

First, I plan on blogging once a week.  Since I starting blogging last year I was not consistent with it, but I will now ( I promise)!

Second, I would like to tweet more regularly.  I love reading and learning from everyone’s tweets but now I would like to contribute as well.

The third and final resolution this year is to increase my professional reading.  During this break I finally started reading Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, I look forward to sharing my thoughts on this book along with other books on my blog!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Two Wonderful PD Summer Opportunities

      When you look at the Sunday paper this week there will be will ads for Back to School!  Where did the summer go?  How did we get to the end of July so quickly?  I cannot let any more time pass without talking about two wonderful professional development opportunities I had this summer.

      In June some of my colleagues and I attended ISTE (International Society for Technology In Education) for the first time.  WOW!  What an incredible experience. 

      Here is a list of the top 5 great things about ISTE:

1. Fabulous speakers such as Dr. Medina, author of Brain Rules
2. The wonderful presenters and their fabulous insights.
3.  A great vendor area with lots of free giveaways.
4. Listening to Alan November
5. Meeting fabulous people and growing my PLC!

     I am looking forward to my colleagues and I sharing this information with the rest of our faculty when we return to school.  You definitely don’t want to miss ISTE 2012.  For more information about ISTE go to http://www.iste.org/conference/ISTE-2012.aspx

As I mentioned in my first post I have a new position in my school as an Instructional Technology Coach, I am one of two coaches.  As coaches we attended the Understanding By Design (UbD) Train the Trainer Workshop just two weeks ago.  UbD is a framework to deepen student understanding through a “backwards design”.  Grant Wiggins was absolutely incredible and a true inspiration. This year we will be implementing UbD.  We already reflect upon our teaching strategies and how we impact our students, along with discussing the essential question of the lesson, so we are on our way of a successful UbD implementation.  For more information about UbD go to http://www.authenticeducation.org/index.lasso

This has been a wonderful summer of professional development.  I am really looking forward to the upcoming school year!