Edtech Share Fair 2016 Tickets on Sale!

Just a short post to announce that the FREE tickets to our second annual Edtech Share Fair are available now!  (You can read about Edtech Share Fair 2015 here.) The event is Wednesday, March 23, 4:00 to 5:30 pm EST, and is open to educators both inside and outside of our district.  The Edtech Share Fair will be held at Southside Elementary; we will start in the campus's Blair Center and move into the school itself for the presentations.

More information on the Smore flyer below.  To order tickets, you can go directly to the event's Eventbrite page.

Mark your calendar and we'll see you there!

KySTE and our first Edtech Share Fair!

As I desperately try to thaw out, I look ahead to March, which will bring warmer weather and some busy times with it.  Today I want to highlight two events that happen next month, KySTE's spring regional edtech conference and our inaugural Shelby County Edtech Share Fair.

(Quick side note:  both of these events are on Watson's World under the "District PD Opportunities" page.  I update this page periodically.  Here's a link.)

KySTE

KySTE is the local regional chapter of ISTE.   Every spring at the Galt House in downtown Louisville, KySTE hosts the largest Kentuckiana edtech conference of the year.  I have had the privilege of attending as well as presenting at the conference several times.

This year's March 4-6 conference theme is "Welcome to the Future."  I am attending all three days and presenting at two sessions: one on augmented reality (Thursday, March 5, 10:30 am, Coe Room) and another about the construction of Southside Elementary (Friday, March 6, 10:30 am, Coe Room).  Southside just opened in August 2014 and features some of the most sophisticated intelligent classrooms in the district. The Southside presentation will be a group effort, and features Tommy Hurt (Shelby CIO), Kerry Whitehouse (Assistant Superintendent of Operations), and Susie Burkhardt (principal of Southside).  Several Shelby County instructional coaches and teachers are attending the conference as well, and I can't wait for us to share what we will discover at the sessions.

For a list of #KySTE15 session topics, click here.

Edtech Share Fair

This week, we began to officially beat the drums for our first ever Edtech Share Fair on Thursday, March 26 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm at the district's new Learning Center next to Southside Elementary.   I'll share our "press release" with links to more information; I will embed our Smore flyer and our ThingLink page underneath.

Be sure to get your tickets ASAP!

Step right up, step right up!  Our inaugural Edtech Share Fair is coming to the new Learning Center at Southside Elementary on March 26, 2015, 4:00 to 5:30 pm.  Nine teachers from around the district (elementary, middle and high school in several different content areas) will set up their “station booths” and give short presentations on various tools, as well as lead mini-discussions with audience members.  Hear how they have integrated their edtech into their classrooms and impacted student learning, while getting a chance to visit our newest district space.

But this is no typical PD!  With Adam Watson as your carnival barker, be prepared to rotate through only the stations you select in the order that you want.   There may even be some popcorn on this midway of learning.  So come one, come all!  Help make our first Edtech Share Fair a success!

To get your FREE ticket, please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/edtech-share-fair-spring-2015-tickets-15803660173

To take a virtual tour of our Edtech Share Fair, explore this Thinglink page: http://www.thinglink.com/scene/626833573361483778

For a Edtech Share Fair FAQ and a preview of the nine presenters and their tools, see this Smore flyer:  https://www.smore.com/dgk17

Be sure to follow our event hashtag: #scsharefair   twitter.com/hashtag/SCsharefair

Edtech PD for the district 9/22 and 9/29!

Major PD announcements, minor edtech teaching tangents! As you know, as the school year continues, I will eventually be embedded at each Shelby County School for 3 to 4 weeks. However, you can quickly do the math and see that it will be 2015 before I get to half of the schools, and some school will inevitably be last. What can we do to make this more fair? Easy solution! We are offering TWO edtech PDs open to the whole district, and of course, FREE to Shelby County Public School employees. Both PDs will occur in the Auditorium of Collins High School.

Tangent #1:  Not only am I thankful for Mr. Leeper playing host, but I also want to give him kudos for re-introducing Smore to me.   Mr. Leeper uses Smore to produce a weekly email newsletter for his faculty, but it's also a clever, easy and and free way for students to create an engaging visual presentation / instant website. It's very user-friendly and there are several ways to share the link with others.  Think of it as an easier alternative to Glogster.

Tangent #2: I first heard of Eventbrite when registering for EdCamp Kentucky.  Eventbrite allows you to organize events, create a website presence to promote it, and  tracks registration by "selling" tickets online.  If your event is actually free, you can do all this at no charge; if you do charge, Eventbrite keeps a cut of the sales.  Tickets can be printed out or saved virtually on your mobile device in their app.  Either way, organizers can check their online "dashboard" to see who has registered, and can scan the tickets on event day to easily track attendees, again with an app.

Back to the topic at hand.  After creating these PD events in Eventbrite, Smore allowed me (after I gave the site permission) to import my Eventbrite event information to populate the flyers. Talk about a two for one!  The results are below.  Be sure to get your tickets to both days via the embedded links.  (If you have any problem with the registration, please still come on down!)

So, here's the first Smore flyer for the 9/22 PD "Teacher Tech Tools."  (If you are having trouble viewing the flyer, go straight to the Eventbrite page.)




And here's the second Smore flyer for the 9/29 PD "Become a 21st Century Super-Teacher!" (Again, if you have trouble, go to the Eventbrite page.)


Please register ASAP.  Looking forward to seeing you there! If you have any questions, email, tweet, or Comment below.