Albert Einstein said: “Play is the highest form of research.” We’re going to do some serious research into the potential of iPads and other mobile devices for learning. First we’ll play. Then we’ll learn by unpacking the things we did while playing. Expect to be out of your seat and learning with others in this high impact, fun and educational session exploring practical ways iPads and other mobile devices can be used to help students learn and share their learning with the world. Walk away with a kit of resources you can easily adapt to your own school or classroom.
Don’t forget to bring along a smartphone or iPad!
A hugely popular session at BLC12 this session will get you busy building and sharing your expertise! Professional networks are brimming with resources and links and it sometimes feels like too much. One of the best ways to narrow the focus is to crowdsource specific content. Networks should not simply be about connecting with fellow educators, we need to activate the huge potential they have and create together.
Learn alongside Tom Barrett who has been spending the last 5 years crowdsourcing resources that support teacher’s professional development as well as inspire engaging learning in the classroom!
- How can I make crowdsourcing a part of how I design materials for teachers and students?
- How do I engage all of my staff to be able to engage in creating resources together?
- How can I filter the vast amount of resources that I see everyday in my online networks? How do I make the most of the resources available?
- What tools can I use to help create resources with other teachers in my district?
Attendees will
- understand how a network can be a powerful tool for co-creation and not just connections;
- reflect on their own creative practices and how crowdsourcing might fit in;
- see real world examples of how crowdsourcing innovations are being applied in sectors beyond the education sector;
- see a range of examples of successfully crowdsourced resources for education.
- take away a range of tools and models to crowdsource unique resources for your classes and schools;
- see crowdsourcing in action
This workshop will respond to the following learning questions:
1) What elements must we shift in our own methods to take advantage of the global communications revolution and the incredible, transformative options available?
2) How can we design (not just assign) more motivating yet vigorous student work? "
Discover how 21st century skills have been integrated into the Common Core. Free resources, digital tools, lessons and exemplars will be shared. Gain knowledge as well as practical strategies to lead by example and integrate these tools/resources in meaningful and effective ways.
Attendees will:
-Learn about specific free tools and resources that allow administrators, teachers and students to communicate, collaborate, be creative and think critically in a Common Core world
-Participate in a collaborative activity that can be replicated with staff and students
Creativity is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration' - Thomas Edison.
The path to the creative society of the future goes straight through the classroom. When students have been taught the essential skills and knowledge of each subject they develop a deeper understanding of the material and are able to go beyond existing knowledge and transfer this knowledge to new situations. All of the research demonstrates that creativity only happens with sustained hard work, skill, and the confidence needed to take risks. According to Collard, ‘Creative skills aren't just about good ideas, they are about having the skills to make good ideas happen.’
We need to prepare our students to excel in examinations so that they can access the career paths they have chosen, but we also need to ensure that our students are to be able to enter the world as confident, creative individuals who can deal with the diverse and challenging problems they will encounter. Our students will have to master disciplinary knowledge and expertise to do well in tests, but if they are to flourish in the world, they must learn to uncover the learning, and understand how everything connects together, and how to link knowledge across disciplines. When we enable our students to achieve this their creativity will be unleashed.
This workshop will explore practical ways to unleash creativity in your students and enable them to flourish academically. A plethora of strategies, ideas and resources will be shared.
For the past year my school has been running a one-to-one iPad pilot for students in grades 7 - 12. The iPad allows for both formative and summative assessments using a variety of Apps and projects. These Apps and projects provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding of concepts using all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy from remembering and understanding to evaluating and creating. In this session I will share our most successful projects and our favorite Apps. When iPads are used effectively, they are more than just a laptop replacement.
Apps will include
•Explain Everything
•iMovie
•iStopmotion
•iBooks
•Book Creator.
•Socrative
•Nearpod
The Innosight Institute (2012) defines blended learning as: “a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace...” Given that blended learning is NOT about putting content online and hoping students will take it from there... How might we leverage digital tools, environments and processes to give students more control over time, place, path and/or pace, even within a traditional school schedule? How might we most effectively combine face-to-face and online experiences to engage learners and extend their thinking beyond traditional boundaries?
Attendees will consider elements critical to the design of successful “BYOB” learning opportunities, including:
Presentation Resources: http://bit.ly/blcbyob13
Maria Knee and Amanda Marrinan create a participatory culture in their early years classrooms. They use simple but powerful social media tools that transform learning and offer authentic learning experiences. These learning experiences foster collaboration and communication skills and engage children in new media literacy skills while they learn traditional literacy skills. Amanda and Maria will discuss how they create a global classroom bulletin board where children’s learning is shared and enhanced by others around the world.
Attendees will become informed about
Blogs, wikis and twitter as learning tools in the early years classroom
Addressing specific Common Core standards
Young learners and the participatory culture
Collaborative classroom learning opportunities"
Google Apps for Education provides a free cross platform set of tools for educators. You can create Web sites, collect homework, manage student portfolios and much more. If your district has adopted GAfE or is thinking about it, then this session is for you. We will walk through real examples and best practices of how to utilize these tools in an educational setting. You do not have to have Google Apps for Education to join this session, but are curious about what it has to offer.
- Administrators will see a variety of ways to manage a Google Apps for Education Domain.
- Principals will learn how to introduce student directed digital portfolios to their staff.
- Teachers will learn how to achieve a paperless classroom that emphasizes student ownership of the work.
In January of this year, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Salopek began a seven-year walk around the world. Called "Out of Eden," the walk will retrace the path of human migration out of the Rift Valley of Africa, eastward through Asia, across the Bering Strait by boat, and down through the Americas to finish in Patagonia. He will be examining the great stories of our day – ethnic migrations, climate change, resource shortages, regional conflicts – as a walking global correspondent for National Geographic. The Pulitzer Center will be heading up the educational component of the walk, facilitating interaction between Salopek and your students along the way through e-mail Q and As, Skype talks, and other methods. We will share some exciting ways teachers have already begun to use the walk as an interactive learning tool and will show you how to get involved in this unique project. Come walk with Paul!
Tired of fighting for the attention of your students while they surreptitiously text their friends about their boredom? How about asking them to take their phones out to learn? They know how to work them better than you AND there are so many educational functions they probably aren't even aware of. Learn how to use smart phones in your classroom to create and complete projects. Turn them on and tune them in to the power of learning on their phones.
Use Twitter chats to engage whole classes in discussions and eliminate the conversation that happens between you and two eager students in your room. Use instagram and video functions to shoot footage for projects - edit them in iMovie. Work on documents using Google drive. Maintain your student publication using Word Press and get to play with other free apps that will enhance classroom learning.
Presentation Resources:
Main Presentation - http://bit.ly/14Qaerl
Collaborative Handout: http://bit.ly/1bUVOJm
Google Form for Paraticipation: http://bit.ly/17wwSTA
Students today want to be active learners, finding their own information and resources, collaborating with their peers around the world and sharing ideas and opinions. Games can provide more engagement than lessons because that is the designer's focus.
The session, will focus on why and how gaming can change classroom practice and equip students with 21st century learning skills, inspire them to stretch and enrich their knowledge and understanding, and demonstrate how Middle School students at Knox Grammar School are learning through creative integrated assessment tasks using Minecraft and other rich classroom gamed based learning experiences.
The outcomes of this workshop will demonstrate:
How gaming can enhance creativity and innovation
How Minecraft was used for an integrated assessment task
How ARC (alternative reality games) was integrated into a language unit
Examples of student work, and
A demonstration of how to use tools such as video, blogs, Edmodo and Quia to gamify the classroom.
This session is an extended version of Lainie's TEDx Talk. It goes more into specifics and gives educators practical information to get connected.
----
This fast-paced session will explore ways that students can use the mobile devices to curate their own learning networks comprised of experts, practitioners, teachers and other students around the world to make learning a 24/7 experience. With mobile devices such as the iPad, learners can perform research, collaborate and produce creative works! During this session we will also discover tips and tricks to make connections. This session will be a rich source of ideas, resources and information for communication and collaboration. Participants are encouraged to bring their own mobile device to participate.
Despite significant advances in technology for learning, today’s education systems remain largely “one-size-fits-all”, ignoring the individuality of students and forcing them into artificial timelines for learning. But what does Personalized learning really mean? In this presentation, we will go beyond the marketing hype around personalization to discuss a true Personalized Learning platforms that enable the creation of personal and social learning spaces to support learner-centered experiences and empower students to direct their own learning. In this session we will discuss successful examples and definitions of personalization approaches and how standards of interoperability are critical to the success of personalization for all.
How large is the gap that truly exists between the real and ideal for learners? Are there ways to “tweak” (small shift) instruction that will enlist students as deep questioners, critical thinkers and effective problem-solvers (big impact)? What if we created a “Destination Postcard” of the ideal learner, and designed learning experiences from there? Join this Switch-inspired think-tank on lesson design and implementation strategies that empower students to think and act their way to the acquisition and connection of content while developing enduring learning dispositions. (Common Core Compatible)
Attendees will engage in discussion and consider activities designed to help educators:
Presentation Resources: http://bit.ly/ssbi13
Our young people LOVE the chance to create, connect and collaborate through different online tools. There are so many possibilities and ways to integrate these tools into the curriculum. This presentation will explore a variety of Web 2.0 tools and how they can be used to enhance the different strands within literacy: listening, reading, speaking, vocabulary, storytelling, writing, spelling, and poetry.
Shannon McClintock Miller will highlight several different Web 2.0 tools and provide examples of how they can be used in each of these strands.
You will walk away from this presentation ready to use a tool or two within each of these strands and armed to answer those questions with, "There's a Web 2.0 tool for that!"
For the past year my school has been running a one-to-one iPad pilot for students in grades 7 - 12. The iPad allows for both formative and summative assessments using a variety of Apps and projects. These Apps and projects provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding of concepts using all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy from remembering and understanding to evaluating and creating. In this session I will share our most successful projects and our favorite Apps. When iPads are used effectively, they are more than just a laptop replacement.
Apps will include
•Explain Everything
•iMovie
•iStopmotion
•iBooks
•Book Creator.
•Socrative
•Nearpod
Are you ready to turn education upside down? Perhaps you have tried a little Flip of your own and want to learn more. You might be beginning an investigation to discover what a Flipped Classroom is with the thought of possibly trying some kind of flip yourself. This is a must attend session before jumping in the air and doing a full flip. Together we will investigate and contemplate what might work best for specific classroom needs. You will leave with a better definition, resources to explore, and tools to begin your flip. Best of all, you will discover how to incorporate Bloom’s higher order thinking skills and blend the learning environment. You may just begin to Flip your idea of what Flipping really is!
Inspired by the vision of our Head of School, Joan Holden, the St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes History Department designed a signature Oral History Project. Together with the assistance of our IT Department students create a polished 10-12 minute documentary based on recording the oral history of a family member at least one full generation removed. Using Blogs, Macs, iMovie and the internet students are fully supported in this endeavor. Established benchmarks must be met during the process including selecting a subject, researching the time period of the subject’s life, composing at least 20 questions, and filming 45-60 minutes of raw video footage. Once these benchmarks are reached students use class time to edit their projects, integrating images and music to form a cohesive documentary theme. This project has replaced the midterm exam for our 11th grade students in a school wide effort to equip our graduates with the 21st century skills of communication, creativity and digital literacy.
Maria Knee and Amanda Marrinan have connected their classrooms for many years. It has been a powerful learning experience for Maria and Amanda as well as for their students. Learn how Maria’s students shared the making of maple syrup with Amanda’s students in Brisbane and how Maria’s students learned more about Australian animals from Amanda’s students. Maria and Amanda will share their learning journey and share opportunities for others to connect. Come learn about and explore opportunities that are available. We will discuss how this can work in your classroom and how to get started.
Attendees will learn:
Tools that help classrooms connect.
How to make this work in your classroom.
Projects, resources and ideas for learning together."
Music is so important to all of us. And, for so many years, if one didn't catch the music instrument bug early (or frankly couldn't afford an instrument), you became a listener, not a participant. NOW..... STOP THE PRESSES! LISTEN! ANYONE CAN MAKE MUSIC! PROMISE! This workshop will focus on how digital technology has allowed us to have access to instruments and our own professional production studio. Also, we have easy access to a plethora of FREE online just-in-time lessons and tutorials. Now, from idea to having a song up on iTunes is a process now that can take a few hours (or less). Think about that! No longer do you need to worry about copyright issues (from using other people’s music) when your students are creating their own music. This will be a FUN and LOUD workshop. COME! Spend an hour with us and BECOME THE MUSICIAN YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE!
Claim and evidence are the two key ingredients for research at the upper elementary level. The Common Core Writing Standards require these students to move beyond summarizing information to analyzing and reflecting on evidence to support a claim. In this session, we’ll take a look at strategies for reflective note-taking that engage students in the metacognitive process needed to analyze and synthesize information from a variety of sources.
How can essential questions, digitized lectures, student research, collaboration, student blogging, historical fiction, self paced learning and mastery learning come together to change teaching and learning in your classroom? Using constructivist methodology, flipped teaching and free applications you can provide students with the opportunity to guide their own learning. During this session, participants will learn techniques, ideas and strategies of how to create 21st century assignments. This session represents the culmination of seven years of reflection and refinement concerning methodology and unit planning between Mike, Garth and their students.
Uncovering information through inquiry is essential to common core learning. In this engaging and fast paced session you will explore search strategies that put students at the center of their search. Mike will guide you through five search engines as you practice using different search strategies and techniques with him. You will discover and explore search engines built on the basis of peer review, computation, readability indexes, social media (education style), and informational searches (advanced but simple). Perhaps you or your students may wish to build their own search engine. Learn some of Mike’s important search strategies that were recently featured in Alan November’s newest book, Who Owns The Learning. You will walk away with ideas and tools that will allow you to address the Common Core while putting students truly at the center.
Fast and easy collaboration is what makes Google tools an ideal learning environment. Gain knowledge as well as practical strategies to lead by example and make collaboration a natural way of learning in your Common Core school. If you are ready to move your school from content consumption to content creation and community building while developing more self-directed learners, this session is for you.
Attendees will:
-Learn about specific Google tools that provide an easy-to-use, integrated way for teachers and students to collaborate
-Explore practical workflow models for sharing and collecting assignments
-Participate in a collaborative activity that can be replicated in classrooms
-Discover how real-time collaboration, powerful sharing controls and seamless compatibility make learning more engaging and a teacher’s life easier
Garth and I have collaborated across two school districts, nearly thirty miles apart for the past seven years. That does not stop our students from learning together (virtually) everyday in the classroom, reflecting and refining their own websites with help of their blog buddies and working outside of school on projects such as Medieval Minecraft villages. This session is strictly about educational philosophy. We will walk you through our educational beliefs our creative process. Experience the “down and dirty” truth behind our collaboration. Our goal is that crowd participation and insightful questions will drive this presentation and create conversation that touches at the heart of teaching.
1. Constructivism
-What does it mean?
-Its place in a classroom
2. Collaborative Process
-Tools
-Re-imagine, Refine, redesign
-Implementation
-Reflection
3. Motivation
-Change from carrots to caring
4. Mastery
-From content to culture
-Using content to teach mastery of skills to empower learning, not knowledge
Reading Aware
Literacy for productive citizens...sharing tools/ideas to empower students.
The session will focus on reading as a means to encourage problem-finding, as a means to encourage service, and as a means to encourage literacy. Students in a high school novels course connected, blogged and created authentic projects inspired by their texts. Follow an English teacher’s journey to create a meaningful, rigorous course where technology empowers and homework is a gift students give.
For years, the November Learning team has promoted and educated tens of thousands of teachers and students on how to read the "grammar" of the Internet and apply simple strategies to validate information. In this session, participants will be taken deeper into this topic with a series of examples that demonstrate how you can address these same topics within your curriculum while also accounting for the Common Core State Standards.
Presentation Resources:
http://www.novemberlearning.com/resources
http://brianmull.wikispaces.com
Inspired by the vision of our Head of School, Joan Holden, the St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes History Department designed a signature Oral History Project. Together with the assistance of our IT Department students create a polished 10-12 minute documentary based on recording the oral history of a family member at least one full generation removed. Using Blogs, Macs, iMovie and the internet students are fully supported in this endeavor. Established benchmarks must be met during the process including selecting a subject, researching the time period of the subject’s life, composing at least 20 questions, and filming 45-60 minutes of raw video footage. Once these benchmarks are reached students use class time to edit their projects, integrating images and music to form a cohesive documentary theme. This project has replaced the midterm exam for our 11th grade students in a school wide effort to equip our graduates with the 21st century skills of communication, creativity and digital literacy.
Tools such as classroom blogging, Skype calls and collaborative projects allow young learners to connect and learn from children who live far away. In addition, their classroom teachers can develop relationships that support their own learning. Come discover how you can connect and develop a classroom environment that spans time zones and empowers learners.
Attendees will become familiar with
Expanding learning opportunities by connecting classrooms
Tools to communicate, connect and learn.
Addressing specific Common Core standards.
The payoffs and the trade offs and what makes it work"
What are your questions or accomplishments for letting genuine inquiry lead student learning? An inquiry-based, collaborative workshop to explore effective ways for secondary teachers to incorporate open-ended, student-led inquiry effectively and creatively to unleash deeper learning. Inquiry is central to curriculum in an IB World School. Come for ideas from our classrooms, student and teacher resources, plus good online networks to tap into a community of inquiring teachers. We will create and post shared resources and ideas from the session.
'Creativity is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration' - Thomas Edison.
The path to the creative society of the future goes straight through the classroom. When students have been taught the essential skills and knowledge of each subject they develop a deeper understanding of the material and are able to go beyond existing knowledge and transfer this knowledge to new situations. All of the research demonstrates that creativity only happens with sustained hard work, skill, and the confidence needed to take risks. According to Collard, ‘Creative skills aren't just about good ideas, they are about having the skills to make good ideas happen.’
We need to prepare our students to excel in examinations so that they can access the career paths they have chosen, but we also need to ensure that our students are to be able to enter the world as confident, creative individuals who can deal with the diverse and challenging problems they will encounter. Our students will have to master disciplinary knowledge and expertise to do well in tests, but if they are to flourish in the world, they must learn to uncover the learning, and understand how everything connects together, and how to link knowledge across disciplines. When we enable our students to achieve this their creativity will be unleashed.
This workshop will explore practical ways to unleash creativity in your students and enable them to flourish academically. A plethora of strategies, ideas and resources will be shared.
This session is an extended version of Lainie's TEDx Talk. It goes more into specifics and gives educators practical information to get connected.
----
This fast-paced session will explore ways that students can use the mobile devices to curate their own learning networks comprised of experts, practitioners, teachers and other students around the world to make learning a 24/7 experience. With mobile devices such as the iPad, learners can perform research, collaborate and produce creative works! During this session we will also discover tips and tricks to make connections. This session will be a rich source of ideas, resources and information for communication and collaboration. Participants are encouraged to bring their own mobile device to participate.
This hands-on workshop will share examples of how teachers in Australia have been using essential student in-class data to constantly reflect upon and inform their own practice. Participants will be introduced to some simple strategies that have been shown to offer unique visibility on learning, whilst supporting high quality learning conversations, meaningful collaboration and measurably higher levels of understanding.
All learners want to showcase their learning for a wide audience and obtain feedback beyond the teacher’s comments. There are safe and effective ways to do this. We’ll look at age-appropriate tools and apps that can be used to demonstrate the learning of the elementary students in your classroom.
You will leave with
• A model for using digital portfolios in your classroom
• Examples of effective digital portfolios
• Ideas for age-appropriate tools to demonstrate learning
• An online handout of materials from the presentation
Presentation Handouts
Google and Apple don’t always play well together. In this session I will show you ways to leverage Google Apps for Education tools such as Google Docs, Presentations, Forms, Mail, Tasks and Sites, on your iPad. We will look at both Google created Apps and third party Apps that help the two to get along. Whether you are teaching with 1 iPad in the classroom or you are in a 1 to 1 iPad setting, you will come away from this workshop with ideas for ways to:
Go paperless
Collect assignments
Sync your email
Give feedback
Share files
Collect data
How can essential questions, digitized lectures, student research, collaboration, student blogging, historical fiction, self paced learning and mastery learning come together to change teaching and learning in your classroom? Using constructivist methodology, flipped teaching and free applications you can provide students with the opportunity to guide their own learning. During this session, participants will learn techniques, ideas and strategies of how to create 21st century assignments. This session represents the culmination of seven years of reflection and refinement concerning methodology and unit planning between Mike, Garth and their students.
Discover how 21st century skills have been integrated into the Common Core. Free resources, digital tools, lessons and exemplars will be shared. Gain knowledge as well as practical strategies to lead by example and integrate these tools/resources in meaningful and effective ways.
Attendees will:
-Learn about specific free tools and resources that allow administrators, teachers and students to communicate, collaborate, be creative and think critically in a Common Core world
-Participate in a collaborative activity that can be replicated with staff and students
Students today want to be active learners, finding their own information and resources, collaborating with their peers around the world and sharing ideas and opinions. Games can provide more engagement than lessons because that is the designer's focus.
The session, will focus on why and how gaming can change classroom practice and equip students with 21st century learning skills, inspire them to stretch and enrich their knowledge and understanding, and demonstrate how Middle School students at Knox Grammar School are learning through creative integrated assessment tasks using Minecraft and other rich classroom gamed based learning experiences.
The outcomes of this workshop will demonstrate:
How gaming can enhance creativity and innovation
How Minecraft was used for an integrated assessment task
How ARC (alternative reality games) was integrated into a language unit
Examples of student work, and
A demonstration of how to use tools such as video, blogs, Edmodo and Quia to gamify the classroom.
Despite significant advances in technology for learning, today’s education systems remain largely “one-size-fits-all”, ignoring the individuality of students and forcing them into artificial timelines for learning. But what does Personalized learning really mean? In this presentation, we will go beyond the marketing hype around personalization to discuss a true Personalized Learning platforms that enable the creation of personal and social learning spaces to support learner-centered experiences and empower students to direct their own learning. In this session we will discuss successful examples and definitions of personalization approaches and how standards of interoperability are critical to the success of personalization for all.
This session will describe the structure, available resources, and pedagogy for creating a High School computer science elective that teaches students how to build Apps for Apple's iOS. It is based on a course that was successfully pioneered in 2011-2012, and continues today. The presenter is the course's current instructor, who does not have a degree in computer science, and who will demonstrate that a degree in computer science is not necessary for a successful offering of this course. Some topics to be covered include but are not limited to the following:
-Apple's SDK and Xcode;
-Dealing with the Apple Developer issue with the HS age group;
-Getting to the documentation with Dash;
-Using Stack Overflow;
-Using iTunesU in conjunction with iBooks materials;
-Introducing a business model to student development teams;
-Vetting the professional literature, from sources such as Big Nerd Ranch, and O'Reilly Media.
Most educators would agree that students' literacy is crucial to their academic success - and a great way to promote literacy across all strands is with the use engaging iPad apps. This presentation will explore a variety of iPad apps and how they can be used to enhance the different strands within literacy: listening, reading, speaking, vocabulary, storytelling, writing, spelling, and poetry. Shannon McClintock Miller will discuss in depth why she likes each app and provides examples of how they can be used in the classroom. You will walk away from this presentation ready to use an app or two within each of these strands. Get ready to have some fun with apps!
"Young learners are active, curious and motivated. Their learning environment should be filled with concrete and hands-on opportunities that engage them and inspire learning. Just as wooden blocks, Unifix cubes and water colors are tools used to explore and develop concepts, digital tools, such as netbooks, iPads, Roamer Robots, video cameras and interactive whiteboards can also enhance the learning in a primary classroom. Learn how digital tools support a learning environment that motivates students to be active, independent and reflective learners.
Attendees will:
Look inside a technology rich kindergarten classroom
Hear student reflections about their learning
Gain techniques for setting up and managing the learning environment
Have an opportunity to discuss and ask questions.
"
In January of this year, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Salopek began a seven-year walk around the world. Called "Out of Eden," the walk will retrace the path of human migration out of the Rift Valley of Africa, eastward through Asia, across the Bering Strait by boat, and down through the Americas to finish in Patagonia. He will be examining the great stories of our day – ethnic migrations, climate change, resource shortages, regional conflicts – as a walking global correspondent for National Geographic. The Pulitzer Center will be heading up the educational component of the walk, facilitating interaction between Salopek and your students along the way through e-mail Q and As, Skype talks, and other methods. We will share some exciting ways teachers have already begun to use the walk as an interactive learning tool and will show you how to get involved in this unique project. Come walk with Paul!
Instructional time is precious. Rather than asking your students to mine the Internet looking for information, show them how to get to the information using effective search strategies. Join us as we take a tour of the tools that Google has developed to help you and your students focus on synthesizing the information you’ve found rather than spending precious classroom time trying to find it. Explore how to use Google’s latest search techniques with your students and develop strategies to help your students do meaningful queries rather than just hunt for data.
How can we encourage young learners to develop their global voice? How do we encourage elementary aged students to become authors and creators of their own digital content? How do we use the legacy of children’s learning in inform, guide and enhance our instruction of future students? This workshop explores digital tools (both through the use if the iPad and through the use of Web 2.0 tools) to create opportunities for young learners to contribute to the world of learning.
The research on comprehension instruction indicates that active readers who think as they read
use a variety of strategies-they ask questions, determine importance, synthesize information
and connect what they are learning to what they already know. These same strategies are
essential for students to turn information into knowledge when using technology. Designed for
educators who desire to move beyond device specific or single-purpose, skill-focused apps, this
session will focus on how a limited number of tools can transform learning as students become
inspired by audience and authentic feedback, connect with classrooms and experts around the
globe, and create projects previously unimaginable. The session will:
marry best practice instructional strategies with current digital tools and practices
address social media, digital publishing, student creation, reflection and cross-grade,
cross-school, cross-global collaboration
offer specifics in supporting students to read with a critical eye and a skeptical stance as
they navigate and evaluate digitalsources
provide a variety of ways to help their students engage in research and investigation
that spark local, as well as global learning,right from their own classrooms
Tools such as embedded quizzes, callout boxes and hotspots can be useful in creating a more interactive experience for students watching instructional videos. In this session, Stacey will explain what these tools are and how they can be applied to create a more engaged learning environment. Among the topics discussed will be how pre-assessments help set the tone for full-class discussion and aid in grouping students and how callout boxes and hotspots draw student attention to key concepts and provide a visual clue to important talking points.
In this session, you will learn:
• How self-assessment quizzes boost student productivity by providing feedback of comprehension and areas to review immediately
• How embedded quizzes provide teachers a quick snapshot of areas that need attention and one-on-one work
• How to help students flag essential concepts from the lecture using callout boxes and hotspots
Online feedback among peers who know one another is effective. Studies have shown that students can be more comfortable with and adept at critiquing and editing written work if it is exchanged over a computer network with students they know. According to Hattie and Timperley, “…feedback is information with which a learner can confirm, add to, overwrite, tune or restructure.’ With an abundance of cheaper tablets, laptops and phones, the ‘student’ has never been more connected. Teachers have a mandate to make use of this technology to enhance feedback for all learners.
This session looks at the theory of feedback and how technology can provide quality feedback in a quick and meaningful way. It demonstrates ways that technology can be used to enhance feedback, providing students with immediate feedback that can be saved, reflected upon and used as future reference when needed."
This presentation will demonstrate the use of various programs including: Wikis, Blogs, Voicethread, Google Apps, Podcasts/Vodcast, Quia as well as various iPad applications. It will also discuss a global project between a class from Australia and the United States and show how students communicated and provided feedback throughout the task.
How can educators integrate Project Based Learning and 21st century skills into STEM education? Even if you only teach just one subject, you can still incorporate STEM and PBL into your classroom. Are you a member of an interdisciplinary team or planning group? ...then it gets even better! Discover dozens of engaging online programs and opportunities that allow STEM and PBL to push your students’ creativity and innovation. The results will be a PBL educational experience that will rev up student engagement and inquiry…full STEM... or should we say... STEAM ahead! View several brief demonstrations of software and take a tour of some amazing web sites. Learn from practicing educator Michael Gorman, who was named STEM Educator of the Year by the Indiana US Air Force Association, an Indiana Teacher of the Year Semi-finalist, a BIE National Faculty Member, and a facilitator for the Siemens Discovery Education National STEM Academy. Walk away with resources that will allow for a real partnership between STEM and PBL!Best of all discover how the new Common Core makes PBL and STEM a perfect 21st century learning opportunity. Join Mike in a session that promises to be an exciting PBL entry event giving participants ideas and content they can use tomorrow!
Instructional time is precious. Rather than asking your students to mine the Internet looking for information, show them how to get to the information using effective search strategies. Join us as we take a tour of the tools that Google has developed to help you and your students focus on synthesizing the information you’ve found rather than spending precious classroom time trying to find it. Explore how to use Google’s latest search techniques with your students and develop strategies to help your students do meaningful queries rather than just hunt for data.
The Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards demand careful evaluation and integration of information presented in diverse media and formats. Learn how to scaffold success for your middle school students as they sharpen their skills for analyzing main ideas and details, analyzing the purpose of information, and evaluating the motives behind a presentation. Sharpen your own media literacy tools as we practice these skills together!
Each year the amount of published information continues to expand at a staggering pace. From books and periodicals to web-based content, it's easy for teachers to get lost in this information explosion. How can we discover engaging resources that move the textbook as the focus while putting students at the center? What tools allow teachers and students to view and archive relevant information that helps them to understand new content? Join us as we explore a new category of web-based tools-tools for curating information-and see how these tools can help both teachers and students align with the new Common Core.
Presentation Resources:
http://www.novemberlearning.com/resources
http://brianmull.wikispaces.com
Tired of fighting for the attention of your students while they surreptitiously text their friends about their boredom? How about asking them to take their phones out to learn? They know how to work them better than you AND there are so many educational functions they probably aren't even aware of. Learn how to use smart phones in your classroom to create and complete projects. Turn them on and tune them in to the power of learning on their phones.
Use Twitter chats to engage whole classes in discussions and eliminate the conversation that happens between you and two eager students in your room. Use instagram and video functions to shoot footage for projects - edit them in iMovie. Work on documents using Google drive. Maintain your student publication using Word Press and get to play with other free apps that will enhance classroom learning.
Presentation Resources:
Main Presentation - http://bit.ly/14Qaerl
Collaborative Handout: http://bit.ly/1bUVOJm
Google Form for Paraticipation: http://bit.ly/17wwSTA
Online learning will become a normal feature of high school experience before we know it but, unlike at the university level, it is still quite new for secondary schools. Come learn of our experience with offering online courses for several years as part of the IB Diploma Programme in an IB World School. Perspectives from students, online teachers and the school administration about the challenges, problems, promise and excitement of being part of global digital classrooms. Please come to share your experience with online learning of any kind or to learn more about effective online learning for high school kids.
If you still think that Twitter is only a tool used to keep connected with friends or with happenings around the world, you could be missing out on greater opportunities to help students expand the boundaries of their learning. In this session, participants will find out how Twitter can help students collaboratively solve problems, search out alternative perspective on global issues and gain further insight to information they have found online.
Presentation Resources:
http://www.novemberlearning.com/resources
http://brianmull.wikispaces.com
Claim and evidence are the two key ingredients for research at the upper elementary level. The Common Core Writing Standards require these students to move beyond summarizing information to analyzing and reflecting on evidence to support a claim. In this session, we’ll take a look at strategies for reflective note-taking that engage students in the metacognitive process needed to analyze and synthesize information from a variety of sources.
This hands-on workshop will share examples of how teachers in Australia have been using essential student in-class data to constantly reflect upon and inform their own practice. Participants will be introduced to some simple strategies that have been shown to offer unique visibility on learning, whilst supporting high quality learning conversations, meaningful collaboration and measurably higher levels of understanding.
