Welcome to the last episode of season 3 of Tech Tuesday! This has been an incredible season of 17 episodes!! My first two seasons only had 10 episodes, so I am thrilled to have produced more videos this year that I hope have helped you implement technology into your classrooms.
For my last episode this season, I wanted to do something special that involved all of you! As teachers, it’s important that we reflect on our school year and our practice as educators, however as we all know, finding time to do this can be difficult. That’s why in this episode I wanted to reflect back on the year and hear from you about your favorite technology projects. It’s a great way to end the season and perhaps one of these ideas will inspire you over the summer break! So here are educators from the secondary campus talking about their favorite technology projects from the year!
Thank you so much to everyone who shared your projects! I loved hearing about these ideas and am looking forward to what our next school year will bring!
I am so very grateful to have worked with so many of you over this past year. There have been some great projects from Ms. Jernigan’s and Mrs. Wu’s 6th grade Science classes creating weather videos to Mr. Gamill’s Marketing and Advertising classes creating TV and radio commercials, working with Mrs. Carr-Lee on digital scrapbooks in History classes to creating interactive models of iconic bonding in Google Drawings in Miss Hall’s 8th grade Physical Science classes, along with so many others. Thank you for inviting me into your classrooms!
TECH NEWS
Summer break will be here before we know it and I know many of you, after a little time off, will be thinking about what to change up in your classrooms next year. The last couple of years I’ve used this Google Doc from Catlin Tucker called “Things to Revamp for Next Year”. This Doc helps you reflect on the past school year breaking down different aspects such as classroom routines, lesson ideas, and specific skills you want to emphasize and how you want to revamp it. It’s a great resource, no matter how many years you have been teaching.
Summer can also be a good time to catch up on some professional development opportunities and there are several FREE online options this summer. Please remember in order for something to count as PD points in the state of Virginia it must be 5 or more hours. I believe all of these opportunities fall under this requirement, but as these are outside our district, you are responsible for making sure you provide proof of the time requirement. You will also be responsible for uploading any documentation and adding it to TeachPoint. If you need a refresher on how to add PD to TeachPoint, check out this video by Chris Konig. First up, is the ISTE Conference, that is the International Society for Technology in Education conference. It is the biggest ed tech conference and is held annually in June. I mention this conference because while it is a great conference, I was able to attend in 2013, it is expensive…but there’s always Twitter to the rescue! The hashtag #notatISTE or #notatISTE19 are available to those of us that can’t go and still feel like we are getting some of the experience! I encourage you to check it out during the conference that is held from June 23rd to the 26th. Participants in attendance will be sharing their thoughts and found resources, while some presenters will share out links to their presentations. You can also follow the #ISTE19 hashtag for more ideas.
The Strobel Summit is hosted by Kim Strobel, an educator and consultant. This summit is offered from July 7 through July 26th and is similar to the Hive and Ditch Summits that I have promoted this past year. She’ll have different education leaders present in 7 sessions on different topics with a new video being released each day. To register visit strobeleducation.com.
The Teach with Tech conference is like a face to face conference only online! Running from July 22nd to July 24th, they will have 20 minute breakout sessions with over 60 speakers. What’s different about this conference is that there is a free and paid option. Participants with a free ticket will be emailed a link to that day’s YouTube video playlist. If you can’t watch a session during its scheduled time, you will be emailed a link to the “replays”, which will be available until July 29th. However, with the paid option of $10.95, you will have access to all of the videos for an entire year. You can register at teachwithtechconference.com.
Next up, Ditch That Textbook is joining forces with CUE, an education nonprofit in California and Nevada. CUE hosts one of the largest educational technology conferences in the country in the Spring, as well as many other events. They will be offering a week’s worth of online sessions from July 29th through August 4th, focusing on Teacher Health and Wellness before the start of the next school year. At this time, there is not a place to register so keep your eyes peeled on Twitter and check out @CUE or the hashtags #WeAreCue or #ditchbook.
Finally, The Hive Summit will be back from August 1st through the 14th. This was very popular in MPCS last year and I’m looking forward to it again as I know many of you are as well! This year’s summit features 9 speakers and will drop with new videos every day. You can register at hivesummit.org.
And…don’t forget that on August 1 and 2, we will be having our very own DIGICAMP! This is our 2 day summer camp for teachers where you can learn about all things innvoative and technological! There will be 8 breakout sessions, games, food, and T-shirts! I’ll be running two sessions, “Get Hooked on Hyperdocs” and “Remaining Aloft in the Twitterverse” for advanced users. This is a completely free event to MPCS teachers. Register at bit.ly/mpcsdigicamp. It’s also not too late to sign up to present! If you’re interested, click here!
One last reminder about getting PD points for watching Tech Tuesday! If you watch the last 5 episodes from this season (Episodes 13-17) AND come up with a lesson plan from ONE of these episodes you’ll get 5 PD points.
Here’s what you need to do to make sure you get your points:
- Submit the form in the description area below telling me what you learned in each episode and add the file with your lesson plan.
- Register for the PD Session called “Tech Tuesday PD series” in Teachpoint.
You MUST do BOTH steps in order to get your points. The form will be available until June 14, 2019.
Once again, thank you for watching! I hope you all have a happy and safe summer! I’ll be back in the fall with new episodes for season 4!
Ms Priester EDU 