Day 2 at the Conference, March 23rd 2017.
A lot has changed in the world of the EdTech conference. I have been very fortunate to attend and present at many conferences and have absolutely loved it. Today was another reminder that these conferences have become less about tech and more about teaching and learning - powered by technology. That is great.
Another inspiring day. The hosts for the day from http://educationchangemakers.com/ keep things moving and provide the prompts and questions that get the collaboration going. How often do we get to spend time asking the big questions and getting answers from our peers. Why don't we do this in staff meetings?
A video to start on writing a letter to your past self on your first day teaching:
Activity: What is your big "How can we..." question. Write it down and get answers from as many people as you can moving around the room. My question about integrating technology met with some great responses:
New product - Seqta creator is an upgrade of the text editor in Seqta. Other notable things:
A lot has changed in the world of the EdTech conference. I have been very fortunate to attend and present at many conferences and have absolutely loved it. Today was another reminder that these conferences have become less about tech and more about teaching and learning - powered by technology. That is great.
Another inspiring day. The hosts for the day from http://educationchangemakers.com/ keep things moving and provide the prompts and questions that get the collaboration going. How often do we get to spend time asking the big questions and getting answers from our peers. Why don't we do this in staff meetings?
A video to start on writing a letter to your past self on your first day teaching:
- Give staff time to play
- Help staff see the value to them
- Get them to have FUN
- Help people to see the relevance and how it can benefit kids (that is what we are there for, right?)
- Make a real-world connection
Alan November
Alan November is the star of the show - some ideas he offered, suggested, prodded out of us...
- Get kids to make collaborative notes in class - assign someone different to take the notes for the day. Kids without a voice may find it.
- Great formative assessment to see what kids are thinking
- Parent night - show parents the tools to help their kids eg Wolfram Alpha
- Google search
- MLK search - top hit is a site run by white supremisists. We need to teach kids how to find the author of a page - ONLINE LITERACY! We don't teach this and should! Go to https://www.easywhois.com/ to find the 'author'.
- link:www.mlk.org site:.edu link:www.stormfront.org
- That is not a normal search!
- http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/teaching-and-learning-articles/the-advanced-google-searches-every-student-should-know/
- https://archive.org/web/ is a cool tool for the times we want to see what was on a website even after it has been taken down. Also a great way to teach students that what they post online is permanent!
- Great interview questions - if we were interviewing someone what great questions could we ask? Our group came up with:
- What are you going to do to support kids to be lifelong learners?
- How are you going to give kids agency in their learning?
- What is you own PLN?
- How has you teaching developed over the years?
- How do you make great relationships with students? What would you do in your first week?
- Alan's questions: http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/teaching-and-learning-articles/interview-questions-for-new-teachers-in-21st-century-schools/
How dependent are students on the teacher to learn?Cool tools:
- PRISM http://prism.scholarslab.org/ - a tool for collaborative interpretation of texts. A great example of making a classroom 'safe' for students to contribute to
- Perusall https://perusall.com/ similar to Prism but for whole books - kids highlight and question together on a text.
- Verso http://versoapp.com/ allows teachers to pose a question through text, images or video and have students respond - anonymously. They also can only see the discussion if they respond.
How do you build legacy into learning?The first five days of school - Alan's take is we teach skills that kids will use all year + learn as much as we can about the them:
- Day 1…how to ask questions, questioning toolkit, divergent and convergent question, Verso, get kids to ask questions about what they don't know
- Day 2… teach kids how to get their own answers.
- Day 3… give kids jobs - make a team
- Day 4… Global connection - hashtags on Twitter
The situation or moment when I became a better teacher was...Great question prompt with powerful stories!
We UNDERESTIMATE kids passion, creativity and critical thinking skills and OVERESTIMATE their ability to use technology
SEQTA Launch
New product - Seqta creator is an upgrade of the text editor in Seqta. Other notable things:
- Communities for everyone
- Cover page
- Reordering - not available - yet
- Office365 integration
- Themes - not in the new editor
- Polls
- iOS app - coming soon
- New design for Learn and Engage
- Analytics - June
- Synergetic/Seqta partnership
- Reporting control with analytics