Too often our technology integration is limited to show and tell opposed to show, play, and plan. Just as we appreciate time to explore, so do our students. During this session, we will play with a few apps and crowdsource implementation ideas for students to show understanding. Literacy as the focus, creation a must, we will explore stopmotion as well as other free digital storytelling tools.
iPad apps: iMotion HD, Chatterpix, 30hands
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and dedicated people can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Mead
At Thomas A Edison CTE High School, we strive to incorporate our technical and vocational skills into our academic classes. It is the goal of our workshop to explain how the CTE classes we taken inspired us to use the skills that we have acquired to advance the world. From every conference we’ve done to every position paper we’ve written we have learned and experienced so much, and it made us think that we could do something about the problems we see in the world. Because of the passion and desire that our class has for making a difference, we have put actions to our words. Our class sponsors the Human Enlightenment Centre, a girls vocational school in Pakistan that suffers from regular lapses in electrical supply. In an effort to help, our class has combined our shop skills and created a solar panel battery charger to alleviate the issue. We are designing a human rights museum in our high school to expose the problems that our class is trying to resolve. In addition our class is also producing a textbook on Apple iBooks that future classes will use as a continuously evolving textbook.
Changing the world cannot start without changing ourselves. It is our hope that the big challenges of the future can be met by the small steps we make today. We know that we can be the change we want to see in the world, as Gandhi once told us to be. We chose a song called "Heroes" as our anthem, not because we each think we are, but because we have learned that all it takes to be heroes is that one small step that can change tomorrow for everyone.
Flip your classroom quickly and easily with Office Mix! With Office Mix, you can create digital lessons in PowerPoint with simulations, quizzes, discussions, and more. Quickly share your Office Mix with your students for them view on any device and easily differentiate instruction by using Mix analytics. Or mix it up- have students create Mixes for authentic assessment.
After the students give their presentation, they will stay to answer questions in order to give everyone who wants to know more about their inspiring project a chance to talk to the team.
CS50 is Harvard University's introductory course for majors and non-majors alike, a one-semester amalgam of courses generally known as CS1 and CS2. In 2007, we set out to alter the course's style and tone to resonate with those "less comfortable" and "more comfortable" alike, albeit without sacrificing the course's historical rigor. We maintained the course's underlying syllabus but revamped every problem set, providing students not only with more direction but context as well. And we augmented the course's support structure.
As of 2014, CS50 is Harvard's largest course with over 800 students, up from 132 in 2006, and those "less comfortable" now compose the course's largest demographic. In 2015, CS50 will also be offered in parallel at Yale University. We present in this talk what we have done and why we have done it. We look at CS50’s online counterpart, CS50x, Harvard College's first course to be offered on an even larger scale via edX with nearly 500,000 registrants. And we offer a glimpse of CS50 AP, an adaption of CS50 for high schools that will satisfy the new AP CS Principles curriculum.
Are you interested in using your twitter account as a communication tool with your students? Come see how a geometry teacher uses Twitter to engage her students in and outside the classroom in 140 characters or less. We will explore how a learning community has been created between the teacher and students through tweets, hashtags, and student created resources that are being shared through Twitter. Not only will you see the teacher’s perspective on managing a classroom Twitter account, but also student and parent testimonials.
Want to go paperless? Looking for a way to revolutionize your teaching and learning? Experience the power of Microsoft OneNote! A free tool that takes digital notebooks to the extreme while keeping everything together on all of your devices. Organize, create, and collaborate anytime anywhere with text, audio, video, files, digital ink, and so much more!
Mozilla’s Doug Belshaw says that the “heart” of “digital literacies” is the Remix. Kirby Ferguson eloquently encouraged us in his TED talk to “Embrace the Remix”, because, as his enlightening documentary series reminds us, “everything is a remix”. Newspaper blackout artist and award-winning author Austin Kleon’s advice to budding creatives is to “Steal Like an Artist”, because “you are a mashup of what you let into your life”. Our students are engrossed in remix culture - they are the appropriation and recontextualization generation. Remix calls for knowledge and understanding, critical, higher-order, and design thinking, a variety of tech skills, and, frequently, collaboration and navigation in the greater media landscape. Most importantly a remix task offers students a chance to truly transform a work and create something unique - something that will contribute to their digital presence and legacy. This session is part pedagogical/philosophical and part participatory. Attendees will leave with a “goodie-bag” of resources and ideas in the form of an ever-growing G+ community to organize resources and serve as a space for sharing participant work and continuing the conversation long after the conference has ended.
The slide show offers a glimpse into the history of remix in the art world and its significance in our present media landscape. We’ll explore how different techniques of remix and mashup lend themselves to collaborative creativity and differentiation in the classroom. We’ll also look into the distinctions between “remix” and “rip-off” and discuss the ways in which to help work become transformative rather than mere copies. There will be some discussion of copyright reform, fair use, and creative commons as well. Philosophically we’ll look at the work of William Burroughs, Grandmaster Flash, and Andy Warhol as well as the more recent efforts of writer Austin Kleon, media theorist Henry Jenkins, MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergartener Mitch Resnick, documentary filmmaker Kirby Ferguson, and the online course DS106.
We’ll explore how social media in particular inspires recontextualization and re-imagining. And, in an era of ever-abbreviated communication, we’ll look at various ways to essentialize and synthesize into more minimalist, visual interpretations.
Participants will have the chance to have at least one hands-on experience, so it is helpful to should bring your own device and ideally create a G+ profile ahead of time so you can access all the resources.
How often do you leave a workshop or conference session brimming with ideas and anxious to put them into action? Bring your take-aways and join this “maker space” to design, develop and test-drive your ideas for lessons and activities. Members of the November Learning Team will be on hand to support efforts and share key strategies for transformative learning design. Question, reflect, revise and redesign to your heart’s content, knowing you’ll leave with your mind full and a set of activities planned for the #1st5days…and beyond!
Join us to #XploreBosBLC while learning about the potential of augmented reality and geocaching. This session will give choice over pace and path as we embark on a tour of local historical and pop culture landmarks. Participants can choose to stay with guides or do a self-paced tour and stay connected with the group by sharing ideas, photos and videos online.
Requirements:
Walking shoes - We will be covering approximately 2 miles so please wear comfortable shoes!
Participants also need an Apple or Droid phone or tablet with wireless service and the following free apps installed prior:
Meet in the Arlington Room for 5 minutes to do a very quick intro to augmented reality and geocaching.
Handouts with directions distributed and extras left behind for those whose arrive late.
Handout includes instructions that includes the hint for the first location, ways to customize your journey and a link to a community space where you can share photos, videos and ideas from the journey.
Location #1 - Boston Common (historical)
Location #2 - Original Cheers to take pictures (pop culture; www.cheersboston.com)
Location #3 - Boston Public Gardens
People don't need to head back to the hotel with the group. You are welcome to stay out and grab dinner, or just enjoy Boston!
There will be additional "Auras" around town for people to find on their own time if they like.
Most schools and districts have lots of data about their schools and their students but it is “siloed” in separate places and not easily available to help answer the “what-if” questions that drive the discovery of root cause issues of instructional and operational concerns. School staff has limited time to gather and review data. For PreK – 12 school data to be used effectively, it needs to be timely, easy to use, easy to understand (visual) and detailed.
This session will demonstrate how to harness the power of these disparate data sets – student information systems, cloud based assessments, student and teacher attendance, teacher and student schedules, discipline records, report cards, ethnicity, special education and RTI interventions, and many other available electronic data sets. District, building, and classroom leaders need to utilize 21st century teaching and learning tools that aggregate their formative assessment data and empower them with the ability to inform ongoing instructional planning that improves student achievement. Teachers and principals need to quickly assess trends across grade levels, within classrooms, and for individual students to enhance the focus on needed interventions for student success. Summative assessment results are useful for accountability and long term planning but are not as valuable as the data from formative assessments gathered throughout the process of teaching. Proactive school and classroom leaders utilize regularly updated 360° profiles of their schools, classrooms, and their individual students, to target plans for instruction, set goals for growth, and to decide what resources are needed for the next stage of instruction. Come learn how to sort, filter, analyze, and compare your school and district data with easy to use visualizations that maximize the precious time available in your school’s professional learning communities.
Sway is a brand new creation tool from Office joining Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Sway helps you easily create and share an interactive web-based canvas of your ideas, which looks great on any platform or device. Teachers can use Sway to create and share interactive lessons, assignments, study guides, trip reports, and best practices. Students can use Sway bring assignments, projects, reports, and study materials to life. Come to this session to learn more about how Sway helps you and your students visualize and share your ideas in an engaging new way!
Robert College of Istanbul has been running a BYOD program since 2011. Student Tech Crew plays a crucial role in the success of the program throughout the years! Students voluntarily apply to be members of this leadership program. They take additional technology trainings and become our ambassadors in and outside the classrooms!
They run Genius Bar at the heart of the school during lunch times, create videos for their friends, teachers, parents and they help the community by sharing and teaching.
We’ll walk through the best practices and lessons learned in this session!
