Friday, August 14, 2015

#firstdayfun

Administrators Melissa Tollison and Brad Moore at Powdersville Elementary organized an awesome scavenger hunt for their faculty's first day back to school, and it was definitely an idea worth sharing!



With several newly hired teachers and a lot of physical changes in the building, Mrs. Tollison and Mr. Moore were looking for a creative way for everyone to learn the changes. The scavenger hunt they put together was a great way to accomplish that goal, promote teamwork, refresh technology skills, and promote a Twitter culture!

Teachers were assigned to groups in an effort to mix new teachers with veterans, techie teachers with not so techie, and different grade levels. Within each group, the teachers selected jobs from the following: QR Code Scanner, Notability Note Keeper , Social Media, and Models. The teams stayed together to scan the QR codes, find the correct locations, take creative photos at each of the locations, add the photos to the notes template, and Tweet about the journey.


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Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Welcome Back, Teachers!

I'm so excited to begin welcoming teachers back to school tomorrow morning! It is hard to believe that this will be my 12th Opening Meeting at Powdersville Middle School.

To help with organizing the many resources that I would like to share, I created a Thinglink. In addition to being more visually appealing than a long list of links, teachers can also bookmark this one web link instead of creating multiple bookmarks for all of the resources.



The background image was created using Canva, which is one of my favorite tools for simple graphic design. I hope everyone will find these resources helpful as they prepare for those first few weeks of school!
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Monday, August 10, 2015

Induction Teacher Tech Day

Every summer our first year teachers begin training in early August to prepare for the start of school. One full day of their training is devoted to technology, and this year we also invited the experienced teachers who are new to our district. Team Innovation worked hard to put together fun and meaningful sessions for this awesome group of newbies!



Inspired by Dave Burgess' Teach Like a Pirate, Team Innovation created a poster to put on the front door and started the morning with PlayDough! We asked teachers to use the PlayDough to show where they are on the technology spectrum and post a photo of their creation to Padlet. Not only was this a fun way to tap into their creativity, but we were also able to show how to post a photo to Padlet and to collect some information about the new teachers' comfort with incorporating technology into the classroom.


Following the opening session, we had five breakout sessions for our newbies, who were split into groups based on grade-level. To inform everyone of where to go and other important information, we gave each teacher a personalized agenda.



The sessions were: Google Basics with Tamara Cox, First Days of School with Kristen Gunter, Core Apps with Kristen Hearne, App Gallery with our iTeachers, and 1:1 Classroom Management with me. Instead of just talking TO teachers about strategies for classroom management, it was my goal to facilitate a discussion WITH the teachers based on their own experiences.


Management Tips for iPads in the Classroom - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
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Thursday, August 6, 2015

A1 iTeacher August Training

With just three Instructional Technologists serving 14 schools, our army of iTeachers is critical to the success of our 1:1 initiative. We started with just one teacher per school to help with professional development at the school level and our district conference. Throughout last year, we continued to add teachers to our iTeacher program and provided training on presentation skills. These teachers presented at our Transform 2015 Conference.


Over the summer, we selected another group of iTeachers to add to our growing army. For many schools, we now have one iTeacher per grade level! In order to prepare them for the year ahead, Team Innovation planned a fun day of training.

Team Building
We started the training session with professional headshots by David Hearne for iTeachers to use as profile pictures on Twitter, Google+, blogs, and classroom websites. Following the headshots, iTeachers were treated to a craft session with Toshia Leistein from Burlap and Ribbons. The adorable apples seen below will be used to decorate their classroom doors this year!


 Model Classrooms
The next portion of training focused on creating model classrooms. This school year, our district will be hosting a Digital Transformation Institute for leaders in other districts to come tour classrooms and learn more about our 1:1 initiative. We are counting on our iTeachers to create model classrooms for this event and for others in our district to visit.

We began with a discussion about what makes a "model classroom" using AnswerGarden to create a word cloud of  responses. Next, we split the teachers five groups and asked each group to narrow the indicators for one of the ISTE Standards on a Model Classroom Rubric using a Google Doc. After showing how to make their own copy of the Doc, each teacher used it as a self-evaluation. Finally, the iTeachers moved into grade-level groups to share ideas and reflections.

iTeacher Training - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires






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