Reflection

#EdCampMaker

/ Alicia Ray / 1 Comment

My first experience at a “themed” EdCamp was nothing short of wonderful!  The team that put EdCampMaker together really outdid themselves.  After a somewhat slow start due to a bad wreck on the interstate and multiple events on Elon’s beautiful campus, the organizers decided to change the rules a bit.  Rather than having multiple break-out sessions, we opted to stay together as one big group sharing ideas on various topics throughout the day.

Check out the session board and collaborative notes here.

We began with an activity involving 30 spaghetti noodles, one string of yarn, a long piece of scotch tape, and a marshmallow.  Directions: create the tallest tower of spaghetti noodles with the marshmallow at the top; height of tower will be the distance measured from bottom of marshmallow to top of table.  My group, which included the fabulous Chris Tuttell (@tuttelltweets) had a spectacular idea to create tripods of spaghetti noodles using tape to bind them together.  We failed to place the marshmallow on top until the final seconds, only to find our tower was not strong enough to hold the marshmallow up.  After a brief discussion amongst the EdCamp group, we decided that sometimes simple is best.

Then, we began to delve into discussions around makerspaces, what works and what doesn’t.  We talked about how to better our own makerspaces and how to empower our students to unleash their creativity.  One of the Board Members of Elon University posed an excellent question about placing tutorial videos on YouTube of various makerspaces.  I thought this was a brilliant idea; it seemed so obvious, but I believe we all felt that mouth wide open – Ican’tbelieveIdidn’tthinkofthat – moment.

The remaining sessions were Community Spaces, Coding, Minecraft, Robotics, 3D Printing, and Soft-Making (crocheting, etc).  I was the most excited to gain more knowledge about 3D Printing.  Great resources are available for 3D Printing, and many can be found on the collaborative notes for that session.  Perhaps one of my favorite parts of the day was actually the name badges.  The coordinators of EdCampMaker spent the time creating each participant a name badge made from a 3D Printer.  Then we had glitter pens to decorate and make it our own!  I seriously felt like a little girl again playing with the glitter glue.  Other EdCamps are really going to have a hard time impressing me with the name badges.

Finally, the end of our day was spectacular.  We were able to “plearn” (Play + Learn…one of my new favorite words thanks to Twitter) in various makerspaces in the conference room.  We got to play with a MakeyMakey, a 3Doodler, an Osmo, Minecraft, LittleBits, 3D Printers, and a Sphero Ball, just to name a few!  I made some awesome glasses with the 3Doodler and fell in love with the Osmo.

Let me just say that I have never won a door prize at an EdCamp before… this was my 5th EdCamp experience, and I always walked out without so much as a t-shirt or bag swag… This EdCamp ended that streak.  In true Oprah fashion, “You get a MakeyMakey, and You get a MakeyMakey, and You, and You!”  Yep – that happened!  Each person at EdCampMaker got a MakeyMakey to take home!!!  As if it couldn’t get any better, I also won (genuinely won per ticket drawing) the 3Doodler Pen with filament!!!  I get to make even more of those cool glasses at home!  My students are going to be so thrilled to get to “plearn” with these new gadgets in our own makerspace at school!  Somehow I also ended up walking away with a Tinkercad shirt, too!  Remember that I mentioned falling in love with Osmo while there… I ended up buying one as soon as I got home.  It came in last weekend and my 5 year old daughter and I have been playing with it since!  She begs me to play the Osmo.

My biggest take-away from this EdCamp, besides the awesome prizes and swag, was that Makerspace isn’t just the future anymore; it’s what’s happening now in education.  All the ‘cool kids’ are doing it. I believe MakerEd takes engineering, problem-solving, creativity, and critical thinking to levels that we cannot fathom on a standardized test.

Beware! Shameless Plea for Donations Ahead: I have written two grants to get my school more materials for MakerEd.  I am still hoping one, or both, will be funded. In my high-poverty rural school (96% free and reduced lunch), I can’t and won’t ask the parents to supply my makerspace.  If you’d like to help my students reach their fullest potential, please consider donating to my DonorsChoose project, which only has 35 days remaining (ends on June 15, 2015).

#EdcampWNC

/ Alicia Ray / 6 Comments

EdcampWNC was held today in Cullowhee, NC at NCCAT.  There were many first-time edcampers there; it made me reflect on my first edcamp.  My first one was five months ago at the inaugural EdcampWNC… 4 edcamps in 5 months does a body good!  This time I took two colleagues from work and I was excited for them to experience their first edcamp.  We used Google Moderator (which is shutting down in June – hard to believe) to set our session board.

The sessions looked fantastic; it always excites me to see the session board revealed… is that weird?

First up: Virtual Field Trips and Guest Speakers (click title links for collaborative session notes) This session included so many great ideas for breaking down walls in your classroom by allowing your students to tour places virtually.  I have participated in a couple of Mystery Skype sessions and loved them!  In Mystery Skype, two classrooms Skype one another without the students knowing the location of the other classroom.  By asking yes/no questions (can be tweaked to meet your needs), the students narrow down the location of the other classroom.  This is perfect for geography, critical thinking, and collaboration.  Once we discovered the location of both classrooms, the students can hold a short discussion via Skype.  My students loved it and asked to do it again.

In the second session, I used the Rule of Two Feet!  There were so many great topics that I couldn’t sit still in one session.  I started in Teach Like A Pirate (love Dave Burgess and his book) and was instantly inspired by the amazing hooks being used by educators in the classroom.  I followed Gaming in the Classroom via twitter until I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I had to go chat about my new favorite educational tool – games!  There were great discussions about various tools to develop games in the classroom.  Of course there was the obligatory shout-out to Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken, which I hear is amazing & is quickly making my shortlist of books to read!

One of my favorite things about edcamp = small discussions that begin in sessions and lead to big discussions in the halls.

pln

Finally, in the third, and last session of the day, I attended Twitter as a PLN.  I had suggested the topic and became a co-facilitator in the discussion.  The participants ranged from Twitter Newbies to Frequent Fliers.  Twitter changed my professional life, and I feel like I’m doing my fellow educators a disservice if I don’t share the power of Twitter.  From the genius mind of my friend Kenny McKee (@kennycmckee) we held a Twitter chat in the middle of our session to help the newbies feel more empowered to participate in their first Twitter chat.  I personally enjoy attending #nced every other Tuesday night.  Sometimes I just follow along and sometimes I participate; that’s part of the beauty of Twitter.

At the end of the day, we had what was quite possibly one of the best App Smackdowns I have attended.  Sometimes the App Smackdowns can include a lull in action while participants are either deciding on a tool to share, or working up the nerve to share it.  This one was going from the minute it started and continued to get better and better.  I learned about Newsela.com where you can change the lexile levels of current event articles.  They can range from a 4th grade to a 12th grade lexile level!  My favorite was powermylearning.org where educators can search a database of great activities according to grade level and Common Core standards.  Then you can create customized “playlists” of activities.  How awesome!  I shared the app KaleidaCam ($1.99) which is exactly what it sounds like. (Thanks Rebecca!) It accesses your camera and camera roll to create Kaleidoscope images.  There’s a cool line symmetry option which I liked best for elementary school.

As always, I enjoyed my day at #edcampwnc.  These things never let me down.  I am already excited about attending EdcampWNC 3.0 in October, 2015.  Until then, there is always Twitter… and my fabulous PLN!

Side Note:  This is my 5th blog post!  This is monumental for two reasons; first, I semi-successfully kept up my first blog for nearly two months.  More importantly, this fulfills my requirement through EPIC Academy to earn my Blog Epic Quest Badge.  I have been so nervous about publishing my blog for all to see (which may likely be a grand total of 5 people), but tonight will mark the first time I will release my blog to my PLN.  Please… be kind.  I will continue updating regularly with the good, bad, and ugly from the perspective of a new “techbrarian”.  I hope something posted through this blog will be of use to someone out there.  

NCTIES2015

/ Alicia Ray / Leave a comment

It has been nearly 2 weeks since the NCTIES conference in Raleigh, but it has taken that long to take all the amazing things I learned and sort them into a blog post.  I had heard about the “big technology conference” in Raleigh for years, but never had the opportunity to go.  I was determined this year that I would go, even if it meant taking personal days and paying for everything myself.  I was told that if I submitted a proposal to present and it was accepted, NCTIES would give me complimentary registration for the conference.  I created two proposals in the hopes that one would get accepted.  To my surprise, both were accepted and NCTIES took on a whole new priority for me.  My district does a Teaching and Learning Conference in the weeks before school starts back each year, and I was asked to be on the planning committee for the 2015 conference.  I was beyond thrilled; my proposals had been accepted and I had a way to get to Raleigh!

From the beginning, the conference was amazing!  The Opening Keynote was Kevin Honeycutt, who is energetic, enthusiastic, and passionate about education.  I laughed and I cried within the first 15 minutes.  The first session on the schedule for me was my own session – Makerspaces on a Shoestring Budget.  The session was designed for elementary teachers and media coordinators who knew nothing about makerspaces and wanted to start one as soon as they got back to their school for free!

Upon wrapping up my session, I wanted to hear more from Kevin Honeycutt, so I went to his session about adding Art to STEM.  I love the idea of letting students be in charge of their own learning and allowing them to incorporate their own artistic nature into projects they complete.  I stopped by a student showcase and had a second grader tell me about 3-D printers and LittleBits.  Talk about reality-check… if a second grader can explain it & why it matters to her learning, my students should be doing it.

After lunch, I went to a session that validated my personal philosophy, then I taught my second session.  For this one, I partnered with my Exceptional Children’s Teacher, who is exceptionally amazing!  Our session, 8 Ways to Assess Without Tests, was designed to show educators that paper/pencil, multiple-choice tests are not the way to show student mastery.  Instead, use some engaging Web 2.0 tools to do formative assessments.  Each of the 8 ways we discussed has an analysis function, so teachers can focus more on the excitement of the students rather than the ‘assessment’.  Teachers can analyze the data rather than spend all their time collecting the data and scoring it.  My last session of the day was on Coding in the Media Center.  I had approximately 300 students participate in Hour of Code last year using code.org, so I was excited to hear about other coding programs and how other media coordinators were using it.  The presenters, Robin Williams and Pam Lilley, are friends of mine from the NCDLCN, so it was great to support them and learn something at the same time.

My brain was overloaded after Day 1 of NCTIES.  I went to eat with the TLC Planning Team, then went to the Digital Jam to meet up with my NCDLCN friends and network with others.  It was a great time of card games, networking, and relaxation.

The next morning, I was geared up and ready for Day 2.  The session in which I learned the most was Teaming with Media/Technology for Inquiry in the Elementary Classroom.  These two ladies from Rowan-Salisbury Schools had terrific ideas for implementing inquiry-based, problem-based, and project-based learning in a truly collaborative fashion with classroom teachers.  I am so excited to use these ideas in the coming weeks and prepare for next school year!  Finally, I hit the Best of the Web session with Richard Byrnes and Lucas Gillispie’s EPIC Academy session on Personalized Gamified PD.  Finally, I went to Learning with a Twist of STEAM presented by Steven Anderson (@web20classroom).

Speaking of Lucas Gillispie, he created a whole new layer of fun at NCTIES this year.  In an effort to force people out of their comfort zone and meet new people, he created a Conference Quest for anyone who wanted to spice up their experience.  We did quests like “give a random stranger going the opposite way on the elevator a high-five and have a witness sign the back of this card” and “put money in the vending machine for the next person who visits the machine”.  Some required signatures, some required you to tweet a picture with the hashtags #ncties15 and #cq and some even required someone else to tweet a picture with those hashtags!  Go ahead… search Twitter for #cq and see what comes up – we had a blast!

This whole experience was a time of professional and personal growth.  When I started teaching nearly 10 years ago, I never expected I would find myself attending the biggest technology conference in our state, much less presenting sessions at it.  It went well though – I survived & met amazing people who attended my session as an additional perk, and who knows… I just might do it again.