Summer 2019 PD: IFL, Tech Teach Learn, KET Multimedia

Starting this summer, I made a personal pledge to stretch my professional development horizons and present and/or attend conferences I have never attended before.  Two of the three Kentucky conferences discussed in this entry fit that definition!   I left all three with some great takeaways.

Innovations for Learning

Plenty of Google Chrome Developer Mode #SurpriseAndDelight with @watsonedtech at #IFLLEX this rainy afternoon. pic.twitter.com/QXXPjwJGGl

— Kelli Reno (@FDHSBookJockey) June 7, 2019

I have been attending IFL for several years now.  This free annual PD is organized by Fayette County Public Schools (Lexington) and happens every June.   IFL has some of the best presenters from around the state, and the educators that attend also come from all corners of Kentucky.  For the last few years, Frederick Douglass High School has hosted the event, and walking around the innovative building is almost worth the trip in itself.  I presented "Google Tools: The New, the Overlooked, and the Quirky."

Here are some highlights:

• David Kitchen shared his experiences from the first year of flipping his classroom.  Kitchen's accountability structure is to have students watch a video at home (often with EdPuzzle, which provides tracking and assessment analytics) and do Cornell Notes (powerful reflection, and hard to "cheat").  His process of gradual release sounds very useful to emulate.  Kitchen first models what the flipped work will be like at home by showing a video while doing Cornell Notes in front of the class.   Next, he has students do Cornell Notes on a video while in class, providing feedback.  The last stage is having students do Cornell Notes on a video at home.
• Kelli Reno and Louise Begley shared stories from the libraries and how they are addressing the new AASL standards.  Reno mentioned how FDHS clubs and organizations periodically "sponsor" a shelf in the library and provide book suggestions.  I love the way this gives the school community both ownership and voice!
• Kelly Fischer introduced me to a free edtech tool for student content acquisition and assessment: Deck Toys.  Teachers can create an interactive lesson using an easy drag and drop interface, which creates a game-like "board" with activities and dashed line pathways.  For differentiation and personalization opportunities, you may give students multiple paths to choose from.  One activity can be a slide deck, either independently viewed or synched and controlled by a teacher's pacing (much like Nearpod); other activities include puzzles, crosswords, "Lock" (think mini-Breakouts), match, sequencing, and more.

Tech Teach Learn

Quite a productive first session! #KCDTTL pic.twitter.com/PhKmpe350O

— Hallie Hunt Rock (@HallieHuntRock) June 12, 2019

TTL is hosted by Kentucky Country Day school in Louisville every June.  Anyone can attend for a nominal fee.  Not only was this the first time I have attended and presented at TTL, but it was the first time I have been on the KCD campus.  It's beautiful!  I have to give a shoutout to Sarah Shartzer, a teacher at KCD who is not only a leader of edtech for her own school (and TTL!) but presents far and wide.  This year was the first time that registration for TTL was sold out in advance of the event, and I can easily see that happening again as more people hear of this useful and impactful conference.  I led a workshop titled "From Bland to Blended: Best Practices for a Transformative Classroom."

Here are some highlights:

• Ms. Shartzer shared edtech tools for accommodation and differentiation.  Several were new to me, including a particular standout: Visuwords.  It's a interactive way to not only see a definition of a word and its part of speech, but a webbed relationship to other words and concepts.
• Jerry Broyles taught us about Google's geo-related tools such as My Maps, Google Earth, and Tour Builder.  Tour Builder in particular has a lot of potential for being a different way for students to share and present information that is location- or travel-based.

KET Multimedia

Thanks to all of the #ketmpd19 participants in my digital citizenship workshop today! Please let me know the awesome things YOU are doing in your district or school. pic.twitter.com/0GlF4lKl0O

— Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) July 17, 2019

KET Multimedia PD Day happens annually in July, at the KET studios in Lexington.   Registration requires a small fee.  I have never attended before, and was flattered to be asked to lead a workshop on digital citizenship with the purpose of attendees revising and creating their own school/district DigCit curriculum.  The KET building is a fun, state-of-the-art facility to present and participate in a PD day. Special thanks to Brian Spellman for the invite!

Here are some highlights:

• Emily Northcutt (our newest Shelby County librarian!) talked about the usefulness of KYVL, a valuable repository of tools and databases.  Like most districts in Kentucky, we pay an annual fee for staff and student access both at school and at home.  As a classroom teacher years ago, I was ashamedly ignorant of how helpful KYVL can be, and I need to do better to publicize its wealth of resources with our Shelby staff.
• Vanessa Hutchison (a teacher at Louisville Central High School) shared her website full of resources and lesson plan ideas for students to create film projects on a limited or zero budget. 
• Whitney York and Mechelle Morgan enthusiastically discussed makerspace materials and tools used by teachers and students in Murray Independent Schools.   One new find I'm excited to try out: Sphero Specdrums, which combine music making, programming, and possible accommodative assistance (for example, helping students who struggle with learning colors).

I look forward to applying and sharing some of my new knowledge and edtech, and hope to attend all three of these conferences again in the future!

Full disclosure: KET paid me an honorarium to present at their KET Multimedia PD, which I attended on a non-contract day.

EdCampKY, a Postscript

Whoa! Wow! (And afterwards: Whew!)  Just over one week after the first EdcampKY in Bardstown, Kentucky, I am still trying to decompress the good ideas from the "unconference," and can't wait for it to continue on a regular basis throughout the state.

I'll get to a list of my takeaways from EdcampKY in a moment, but first things first.  As powerful as Twitter and other social media platforms are, it's always a treat to see colleagues face to face again  (Donnie Piercey, James Allen, Loretta Shake, Matt Arledge), or for the first time (Mike Paul).

Before I forget, I should also mention that it was a pleasure to meet the principal (Wes Bradley) and assistant principal (Heather Warrell) of the host site, Thomas Nelson High School.  Only three years old, it is built for innovation and collaboration.  Several times I wandered into a classroom and couldn't tell if I was in a high school, or a college campus, or a corporate retreat.  The culture of learning is palpable.  (I took several Twitter pics of the facility, so scroll back through my tweets if interested.)

So, narrowed down, here are six things I learned from Edcamp.

1. The "unconference" approach to PD:  As an organizer of professional development myself, it is extremely hard to see how you could leave it to chance and teacher initiative what the topics of sessions might be until the very morning of your conference, much less who might moderate or facilitate them.  But that's what an unconference does.  Although session assignments are sometimes done with index cards taped to a wall, Google Sheets filled out by the Edcamp organizers provided a digital way to keep the latest session information on track. Also, a true session in such an environment is more of a "give and take" discussion than a "sit and get" presentation.  I think there was a bit of a struggle sometimes to accept this, both for moderators wanting to share their expertise and for the attendees.  However, some of the best sessions were ones where educators popcorned their thoughts around the room.   In the end, an unconference model may just be a cure for the summertime PD blues -- creating opportunity for teacher leadership, time for discussion, and immediacy for feeding educators the exact learning they need, when they need it.

2.  KET Board Builder: Amy Grant shared several of the resources available through the various KET digital resources of EncycloMedia (PBS LearningMedia, Discovery Education, and KET ED On Demand).  While I knew there was plenty there, I usually don't have time to explore it, so that was appreciated info. One of the bigger finds was the Board Builder, a way of creating a electronic "poster" by only adding multimedia from within KET's own resources, making it filtered and vetted.  These Boards require a login and can only be shared with other users within the site, but it might especially be a welcome multimedia tool for those wanting a safe project tool for younger students.

3.  Google Form Add-Ons:  Recently I have experimented with running scripts with Google Forms, giving you ways to unlock even more powerful tools. (If you are interested in the same, here's a page about them.)  Scripts are not easy, and have to be installed every time you want to run them.  However, Google Forms finally have Add-Ons (as a menu choice at the top of an opened Form), some of which recreate functions previously available only in complicated scripts.  Better than that, once installed they can be used over and over and in an easy to use way.  My favorites so far are Choice Eliminator (which takes a multiple choice option away as someone choose one and submits the form -- perfect for scheduling meetings or "first come first serve" project choices) and Form Values (which allows you to save recurring lists of answer choices for questions, like all the schools in the district, to easily insert them repeatedly into Forms).

4.  Shelfies.  A librarian shared this term in one of the session discussions, and I love the idea.  Take a picture of your bookshelf and share it with others.  That lead me to brainstorm a little app-smashing: annotate the picture with Thinglink, adding URLS to author websites, book trailer videos of students chatting up the book, or text-based information.  Stick an iPad near the shelf with the Thinglink on view, and your "shelfie" will now come to life for students, becoming an interactive kiosk. (As it turns out, I'm not the first to brainstorm this idea.  For example, here's one in German.)

5.  NewsELA.   This site takes actual up-to-date news articles and provides an incredible service for teachers and students needing differentiation and more non-fiction, as required by Core Content: you can scale the reading by adjusting the complexity of the text at one of five different levels.  Most have comprehension quizzes as well.  You are limited to five articles without registering, but once you do, you have unlimited access.

6.  Photomath.  This free app is currently available for iOS and Windows (Android coming in 2015); with it, Mike Paul easily won the Edcamp Tech Slam.  It's not hard to see why.  Magic seems the only plausible way that it can work. Using a bit of augmented reality technology, scan a math worksheet that is printed (NOT handwritten) and Photomath will not only solve the equation, but show you the steps on how to get there.  Scary?  A bit. It's technology like this that reminds us that students can get the answers without us, so it is up to teachers to change the questions and make sure students can do the thinking.  Here's a video of it in action:


PhotoMath from MicroBLINK on Vimeo.

Looking forward to returning to another Edcamp soon.   Until then, I'll occasionally check in on the hashtag #edcampky and continue following their Twitter account.

Have you used any of the tools above?  Do you have questions about an "unconference"?  If you went to the 10/25 EdcampKY, what did you think?  Please Comment below.