Ignite Your Passion: Get to Know Each Other

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Recently, the Bedford School District ran its fourth annual Future Ready Conference. There were close to 90 different sessions that were offered throughout the professional development day, with most of them offered by staff within the district. This day happens to be the highlight of my year. Teachers are given choice in sessions that they want to attend. Teachers also learn from their own colleagues, and in some sessions, learn from students. Lots of learning, inspiration, and sharing happens on this day. It is a feel good day.

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The conference felt different this year. I believe one major factor can be attributed to the keynote this year. Staff members could be seen getting emotional as well as sharing a laugh or two. There was a panel of five people who were asked to give a 10 minute talk about their passion, hence the theme of the conference “Ignite Your Passion”. The vision was to have 5 ‘TED Talk’ like style presentations. We didn’t want presenters and participants to read from slides. We only wanted visuals for participants to look at while these speakers gave their spiel. 

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Empathy

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Recently, I applied to attend a Google Innovator Academy. Part of this application process consists of creating a one minute video explaining an idea I would like to tackle. To learn more about this academy, click HERE to read an earlier post.

Below is the video that I ended up creating for my how might we statement: “How might we reimagine online portfolios so that students are inspired to share their story?”

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Google Classroom Updates & Reminders Aug 2019

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Google has made some changes to Google Classroom since we last worked with the tool in June. So to help make sure that everyone was on the same page, I shared out these changes, as well as included some did you know items, in my Welcome Back Tech Training to staff last week.

New Items:

  • Where students submit their work to their teacher has been relocated on the page.
  • Unable to remove Classworks page anymore
  • New sorting features when assessing student work
  • Ability to access menus in files while assessing student work
  • Adding comments to comment bank on the fly
  • Ability to use rubrics right through Google Classroom
  • Filter topics

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Teachers are Students Too

 

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At the beginning of each school year, I am given two hours of training time with the staff at the high school to share new tech ideas, good to know tips and tricks tricks with existing tech resources, as well as helping set up that good ole’ grade book in Power School. Two hours can be a long time if you don’t set up the time appropriately. Teachers cannot just sit for two hours and absorb information. I know that I would want the presentation to be as interactive as possible, if I was the learner, so I keep that in mind when I deliver professional development.

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Using Google Maps in Airplane Mode

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For the past two weeks, I had an opportunity to explore Portugal with family. While this was my first time visiting the country, it was not the first time exploring Europe. This time around however, I discovered something extremely helpful with the mobile version of Google Maps. It was completely new to me, but I don’t think it is a new feature. Some of you will probably nod your head as you have utilized the feature before.

When I travel abroad, I do not get an international plan, especially for the short period of time that I am visiting. I plan ahead while on WiFi in the Airbnb that I am staying in. I take screenshots of things that I want to remember while out exploring. Well, not only did I do this again, I also discovered that you can download an offline map of an area through Google Maps. This allows you access to google maps on your phone while you are not on WiFi. The GPS signal from my phone still let me know exactly where I was. It was great!

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