The day started with an inspiring keynote by Nicholas Zefeldt. How can we make our students' experience meaningful and manageable for us? Nick inspired the crowd of over 400 educators with many concepts, including two key points - providing our students with authentic audiences and the value of student voice. Whether through blogs, podcasts, Twitter, students' work from Writer's Workshop, when we give our students an authentic audience it changes how they see themselves as writers. Students will then be more empowered and willing to share their voice. Focus on listening to our students. Focus on student voice. Nick took the crowd through a segment about podcasting and shared a wonderful web based resource that's simple to use - http://vocaroo.com. It was super cool the way Nick creating an interactive part of his keynote by creating a podcast with the 400 educators in the room, giving tips on how to create podcasts with students, teaching students to say, "Whoops, what I meant to say was ...," and singing a childhood favorite song. Check out Nick's tweet below, especially the link to the podcast!
Made a podcast today @ the @MtDiabloUSD STEM & EdTech Symposium w/ 400+ of my closest friends. Check it out! https://t.co/qlFZs7PoCQ #stem17 pic.twitter.com/i4cIYe67CE
— Nicholas Zefeldt (@nzefeldt) February 25, 2017
Is it meaningful? Does it change the learning opportunity in some way? Saying it's engaging isn't enough.
Is it manageable? You do something amazing. Three days (weeks, months) later can you do it again with ease? Do you want to do it again?
STEM & EdTech Symposium Sessions
- Greet students at the door with eye contact.
- Take role with students saying how they're feeling on a scale of 1-10. This will give you insight into your students. Plus, if you're students do say "2," think about what a great classroom community you've created where students feel safe to share that rating.
- Use gratitude spies.
- Share gratitude surprises.
A huge highlight for me at today's MDUSD's 2nd Annual STEM & EdTech Symposium was partnering with THE Karly Moura for a session on Virtual field trips with Google Expeditions. I have had the pleasure of partnering with Karly on many projects and initiatives, include #TOSAchat, #GAFEhelp - now known as #gsuiteEDU, and various edcamp planning. Today Karly and I facilitated a session on the use of Google Expeditions for a room full of educators. It was great to begin with a discussion of what VR is and what participants thought of virtual reality in the classroom. There were thoughts of positive use and aspects of VR in the classroom, such as access for students, being cost-effective (after the initial cost of the equipment), and creating global connections. It was also good to hear the devil's advocate and cautious point of view of VR too. Is it just a gimmick? A participant said since 3D in television hasn't taken off even though it was projected to, is VR also something that's getting premature attention? The discussion was definitely a great way to set the tone for the session - emphasizing and referencing one point from Nick's keynote in the morning - it's not about the tools, it's about the teacher. It's the verbs we want our students to engage in. Empowerment. Creativity. Access.
The session ended with a review of the value of the verbs and concepts such as access, empowerment, and connections, rather than focusing on the tools. I'm always reminded of the image below.
Updates
Full house for Google Expeditions with @Jyoung1219 and @KarlyMoura - exploring Raold Dahl's hut! #STEM17 pic.twitter.com/IC0bcnbulj
— East Bay CUE (@EBCUE) February 25, 2017
Thanks @KarlyMoura @Jyoung1219 for showing us @googlevr .. Got to check out @roald_dahl 's hut! #STEM17 #MDUSD #VR @EBCUE @MtDiabloUSD pic.twitter.com/ahthrmTd04
— Lindsey Nakashima (@MsNakashima7) February 25, 2017
Take Ss on a #GoogleExpedition✈️, use https://t.co/1pVoBJFZ5m to record their reflection□, link to QR Code then a put it on a map!□️ #STEM17 pic.twitter.com/po7u3q5mHs
— Karly Moura (@KarlyMoura) February 26, 2017
Our first #GoogleExpedition to outer space was a hit! @KarlyMoura @Jyoung1219 they loved it! Thank you so much for teaching me! #yvepride pic.twitter.com/gJpSu7AQqR
— Andrea Ward (@MrsWard3) February 28, 2017
3rd graders went on a #GoogleExpedition this week to visit #RoaldDahl & BFG thanks to #stem17 @KarlyMoura & @Jyoung1219! ♡ #yvepride
— Andrea Ward (@MrsWard3) March 4, 2017