FETC Part 3 - The Sessions

This is the last of the installments of FETC 2016.  This will be the last summary of sessions and a few quick take-aways.  As I mentioned in my previous posts, this might have been one of the best conferences I've attended.  The sessions were informative, thought provoking, and full of real-life experiences.  It was also nice to be attending the conference with 3 others from my district, which provided all of us the ability to process what we had heard.

My first session of the last day was Schools That Work for Kids, with Eric Sheninger (@e_sheninger).  He shared about the process he went through to change his school into a school students wanted to attend.  He wanted his school to work for the students, because most schools work for the teachers and ignore what the students want or need.  He talked about what changes needed to occur and that those ideas came from having conversations with the students.  It was important to make it "their school."  He created awesome learning spaces and allowed the students to design them.  He shares his presentation with everyone here - bit.ly/Schools4Kids .  You need to answer a few questions, but then you have some great resources.  He mentioned that you really need to work the hard to inspire the ones that don't want to change.

I also attended another of Eric's sessions later in the day, Digital Leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing Times.  He shared how technology is changing the educational landscape and that we need to adapt and anticipate those changes.  He stressed the need to embrace social media to tell your story.  You also need to create a brand to represent your school and make sure your messages always support the brand.  Focus on improving public relations and continue learning like never before.  His experiences are well documented and he was sure to point out that there were failures along the way.  It wasn't easy, but the benefits were great.  Here are some resources that he shared - bit.ly/DigiLeadICLE15.

One of the most fun sessions I attended was facilitated by Leslie Fisher (@lesliefisher). She had a great time sharing cool apps and websites with the teachers in attendance. Teachers from the audience were invited to come up and share some cool application. Some of them were:

iBrainstorm App for iPad
Starlogo Nova
Kiddle.co a search engine for kids
Sign Easy App for iPad
Permission Click for collecting permissions
YT Full Fill - a Chrome extension for viewing YouTube

There were a few more fun ones, but I am going to save those to use with my friends. Maybe a future post will give them away.

Conference Take-aways

If you ever get the chance to attend FETC, do it.  What a chance to learn and connect with some outstanding educators and leaders.  Mark your calendars for 2017 - Jan. 24-27.

FETC Part 2 - The Sessions

FETC built its conference around the following topics: Communication and Collaboration, Digital Teaching Tools and Game-Based Learning, Educational Policy and Leadership, Emerging Technologies and Maker Tools, Instructional Design, Mobile Learning, Online and Blended Learning, Professional Development, and Technology Infrastructure. There were hundreds of sessions to choose from, so the four of us decided to split up and see as much as we could.

My first session dealt with Professional Development. Two teachers shared how their PD was developed to model 1-to-1 learning, by recording PD sessions and posting them in their LMS, so that teachers could go back and watch on their own time. The sessions were offered live and recorded. They created a 9-part webinar series for all teachers to learn from. This session illustrated the use of an LMS for professional learning, not just for teaching the students. Our staff could benefit from the creation of PD courses created in our new LMS, Schoology.

The next session, a Journey Into BYOT (Bring Your Own Tech), by Katrina Keene (@teachintechgal), discussed a plan to involve students, teachers, parents, and administrators to develop BYOT. Katrina shared success and struggles that they ran into along the way. It is important to ask WHYs?, and think thoroughly through the HOWs?. It is also important to involve all of your stakeholders. Parent education is a big part of success, and PD for staff in being flexible moving forward. There will be a lot of different devices, and the teacher doesn’t have to know them all. Empower the students, let them help or they can figure it out.

Lisa Bradshaw (@lbradshawedtech) led a session about Model Instructional Technology Classrooms. She developed model classrooms slowly, so that other teachers in the school could come see the successes that were happening. Model Classroom teachers were given the necessary tech, professional development to know what was expected and how to make it happen, and support of technology leaders when failure (or learning opportunities) happened. Their PD for technology use modeled around the SAMR model. Each year more teachers were added as Model Classrooms and eventually buildings moved entirely to quality technology enhanced classrooms.

My next session was conducted by Andrew Marcinek (@andycinek). Andy led a session to examine and explore instructional design and how to plan lessons and units to make learning an active experience. He also spent time exploring learning spaces where furniture and technology allowed students to move about the room and work together in groups. He shared pictures of great learning spaces and encouraged members of the session to think about how we could change spaces for our students.

The last session of day 2 was one centered around Digital Citizenship. The discussion centered around just being a good citizen (why do we need the digital part). Students need to be taught and reminded about being a good member of society. These two teachers, Timothy Wilhelmus (@twilhelmus) and Jeffrey Tron (@JeffTron71), shared how they work with students to keep reminding them of these skills. It is not just a one-time lesson. Digital Citizenship is something that needs to be brought back up over and over. There are many resources that were shared.   They can be found at Bit.ly/DIGCITFETC16.

Sessions were outstanding and we had interesting conversations about how we could bring this information back to our district. There were many things that we can share with our colleagues. It will be fun implementing some of the creative concepts we saw.  There will be one more installment of learning that occurred at FETC.

Blogging with Students

Today, I had the opportunity to work with our IB Art Teacher, Kate Menke, as she is implementing blogs with her students.  We are working on creating blogs with the students so that they begin to develop an online digital portfolio.  They are going to display their work and explanations, as well as demonstrate their critical skills with comments on the other students' work.  These students will be able to follow each other and see the growth over the years.  I believe it is the start of something awesome for these students.

Early in our process, we talked about digital footprint, and what that means for these students.  We talked about what the world can see about them and that it is important for them to share all of the incredible work that they do with society.  It is important that they display their work in ways that impress the readers, whether it is classmates, teachers, family, friends, or anyone else that may find their work.  We also talked about the permanence of their work and that what they post is a permanent statement to world.  Also, part of this discussion was the need to be good digital citizens.  They discussed the need to be honest and sincere, thoughtful and kind.

We then talked about the steps necessary to create a Blogspot blog.  We went through the following presentation and talked about the importance of keeping their profiles empty and keeping the amount of personal information shared to a minimum.  We stressed the importance of the students moderating their comments, so that comments that are questionable can be discussed before going out to the world.  It was a nice process and one that the students will actually go through in the next few days.  The students seemed so excited to get going.

Setting up blogspot

View more presentations from Scott Sibberson.

We have involved the parents in this whole process.  It is important to us to have everyone on the same page as we move forward in this project.  The teacher is excited.  The students are excited. And, I am excited to see how this goes.  I believe the students will grow incredibly throughout this process and they will end up with a product that they can be proud of and show off.