#EdCampNavasota

Saturday, one of my teachers, Kandra Overturf (@kandrarene) and I attended #EdCampNavasota (3 hours away from San Antonio) at Webb Elementary, the campus of Todd Nesloney (@TechNinjaTodd).  A few of my other twitter heros were there as well... Aaron Hogan, Aaron Marvel, Brent Clarkson and Tom Spall. And I met some great new educators to follow Cassie Reynolds, Stephanie Ryon and Jeremy Stewart to name a few.

Why did we leave Friday night and give up a Saturday for this? We are both huge fan girls of TechNinjaTodd and wanted to see in person the kind of learning that takes place on his campus.
But also we wanted to experience another morning of connecting and learning EdCamp style and put some faces to our PLN.  If you haven't experienced an EdCamp before, it is truly a different kind of professional development. There is not ONE person leading the pd.  It is a collective effort among the participants.

 It starts with people writing down topics or questions that they want to learning about on post-it notes and sticking them on a big board, grouping like topic together.  Yellow post-it notes were for topics and pink post-it notes were people who felt comfortable discussing a particualr topic.

Then the organizers of the EdCamp organize the topics and assign a "moderator" just to get the conversation started.  

This is what our sessions looked like.  

The problem comes when there are two (or three) sessions at the same time that you want to be at... Kandra and I split up for a couple and took notes in a shared google folder so we could essentially be in two places at once.  Three was a little more difficult. The great thing was that people were sharing out their learning on the hastag so all I had to do was follow the hastag to pick up some of the great ideas.  

I picked up a couple of really great ideas from the student motivation and campus culture sessions that I am going to take back to my campus to share.  I also got a little better idea of how I might use snapchat or instagram with my students.  One of the best ideas I heard was about Twitter Moments.  Aaron Hogan shared about that in the Socail Media session and it was an eye-opener for everyone in the room.  Aaron blogged about moments here.  And here is an example of a quick one that I put together while he was explaning.  #EdCampNavasota Moment.  What a great way to capture and tell the story of a school, classroom or in my case library.  

When we were leaving Saturday, Kandra said "Well, that was great.  We can check that off our bucket list."  Then today I get this tweet...

My reply..

Why keep all this great learning to ourselves... Hoping some others will join us at #EdCampKaty.

Reflections from TCEA17

I was fortunate to spend 3 days last week at the TCEA conference in Austin, Texas.  19 hours of amazing presentations and that doesn't count the conversations standing in the hallway waiting in line for a session.  Conferences like these are always so overwhelming with information that it takes me a few days to process all that I have heard and learned about.  There was not one session this year that I thought was better than all the others.  Rather every session that I went to offered me something I could take back to my campus.

Here are a few of my take-aways.

Sphero - Emily Felker (@emfelker) did a great job of introducing Sphero as an educational tool instead of just a toy to drive around the library.  While sitting in the session I texted one of my 2nd grade teachers with an idea for using sphero with place value that Emily shared.  She also introduced me to making light trails by using the slomo feature on a camera to capture sphero's light in a dark room.

Sharing Student Work With Each Other-  Google slides now has a Q&A option when you are in the presenter mode where students can ask questions during the presentation, but they can also post work there when finished for classmates to look at.  The same could be done with Padlet.  I have used padlet as a brainstorming tool, but never thought of it as a place to house student projects all in one place.  

Google Virtual Reality Tools - Kelly Fitzgerald (@LISDTechie) led an engaging session on google virtual reality 

Geoguesser - shows a scene from somehwhere in the world and then you try to guess where it it based on landscape, signs, terrain, etc

Google Art Projects - can see a piece of art work and zoom in on the brush strokes and in some cases where it is hanging in the museum to see other art work around it.  (CAUTION... Where there is art there can be inappropriate items for elementary)

Google Street View - can drop into places around the world to see 360 degree view of where you land.  Great for landmarks and ecosystems.

Personalized PD - a panel session with 4 amazing leaders Todd Neslone (@TechNinjaTodd), Jessica Torres(Owl_b_TorresEdu), Jason Bretzmann(jbretzmann), and Mandy Taylor(mandymtaylor).  So many great things came out of this session.  One being getting a picture with TechNinjaTodd!

All 4 educators were adamant about giving teachers choice in their professional development 

And that even if only 5 teachers attend a session, that is 5 more teachers that know about a tool.  That is growth.

TabScissors - this was not technically in a session, but it is one of the best things I learned about!  Before her Google VR session, Kelly Fitzgerald was asking people about things they had learned so far and she shared the chrome extension TabScissors.  This extension allows you to split a window into two smaller windows side-by-side!

Here I have 3 tabs and have to toggle back and forth. 

But by using TABSCISSORS, I can split the tabs and have two windows showing at the same time. 

This is life changing!!  

And one more fun thing.  Have you heard of Bitmoji?

It is an app and a chrome extension that allows you to create your own personalized emoji chatacter. Now besides annoying the people that you text...

which is super fun in itself, but how fun to put them on work that your students are working on in google docs?  Kind of like your own personal stickers... and what kid doesn't love getting stickers?

     

I always learn so much going to these conferences.  Too much to actually post about in one blog. I will write more as I put the tools into practice or share them with teachers.  

Technology Tuesday: Badges for Teachers

I am not sure when I first heard about digital badges, but it is something I keep coming back to as something I'd like to try.  And I think the time has come...

I know the power of being a connected educator and I want more people on my campus to experience the spark that a PLN can ignite.  I think they just need a little push so here I go jumping into something and flying by the seat of my pants again.  Many of the teachers on my campus are taking baby steps out of their technological comfort zones and I would like to find a way to acknowledge and encourage them.  I think digital badges might be a fun way to do this.  

I had a few articles saved in my "pocket" about badges and it has come up a couple of time in Twitter chats that I have been in this fall.  Back in October after one such chat, I emailed my teachers and asked who might be interested in earning badges for different technological tasks or achievements.  I gave them a couple of examples of badges I had created on credly.com

I told them they could earn these badges and then print them out to display in the classroom and/or post them on their blogs and I asked them to email me back if this is something that might interest them.  I received quite a few "Yes!" responses and so it was something I had on my "to be continued" list. 

Recently in an #edtechchat over the winter break, Shawna Ford tweeted

which got me thinking about it again.  I went back and reread the articles and tweets I had saved and got to work.  I reread "Building a Better Badging System" by Marc Toner and Alice Keener's  "Creating Badges with Google Sheets" .  Then Shawna Ford tweeted out a link to her blog post about "Professional Learning Options" and badging which pointed me to more models.  

So I think I have a working (in-progess) system to offer teachers.  I have created a page on my library website where I will post the different badges they can earn and a link to a google form they can fill out to request the badge.  I will receive an email when a form has been submitted and then through credly.com, I can "send credit" to them where they can then print and/or display on their blog by following these directions.

I am going to cross my fingers and hope I have thought this through.  Lucky for me my teachers are pretty flexible so if I screwed something up they will patiently wait until I can figure it out.  I am excited about this and am looking forward to seeing how badges might fuel growth at my campus.  

I would love to to hear any ideas about badging or how you have used digital badges with students or teachers.

Saturday "Wrap" Up

I was attending sessions and  traveling back from TCEA 2015 yesterday and then had Bunco last night (priorities!)  so I wasn't able to post my Friday Wrap Up, so here it is on Saturday.

 - Met with some of my 3rd grade teachers to talk technology 

- attended my district library meeting

- presented Twitter Chatting to my fellow librarians

- drove to Austin and tried to check into the wrong hotel 

- attended 17 sessions at TCEA

- planned with fellow librarians, GT teachers and EdTech 

- completed EduLS Challenge #5

And my wraps are my absolute favorite wraps and on the retiring list - waaaa! :( Funky Cheetah

It's 10:00 and My Brain Won't Turn Off

Call it a side effect of attending a technology conference, but my brain is on full overload. Swimming with apps, websites and ideas to share back on my campus, my wheels are spinning from 2 full days at TCEA 2015 and the thought of 2 more to go.

We started yesterday off at an iPad academy with Leslie Fisher (@lesliefisher).  HILARIOUS. Perfect person to start of an 8:00 session.  She gave us some of the coolest ipad apps and tips in 50 minutes.  My favorite was Plickers.

 A free app in the "iPhone Only" part of the app store, it is the perfect assessment tool for teachers with only a few iPads.  Teachers create an account and form classes.  Within the class, they assign students a number. There are cards on the website to print off that each have a number, a distinctive shape and the letters A,B,C,D in the corners.  Give the students the cards that corresponds with their number in the class. The teacher asks a multiple choice question and gives the answer choices.  The students decide on their answer and with their numbered card point the corner with the letter they think is the correct answer up to the ceiling.  The teachers gets her iPad with the Plicker app downloaded and uses the app to scan the crowd of students.  The app reads the cards and lets the teacher know instantly who has the correct answer and who has the wrong answer.  How cool is that??

Chirp, Augmented Reality, Photobabble, Adobe Voice, Hyperlapse, ChatterPix Kids, Makerspaces, Google Hangouts... See now why I can't turn off thinking about how to use these great tools in my library, but also how to share them with the teachers in a way that is meaningful for them.  

How do you share technology ideas with your teachers?

Technology Tuesday: A Giant Step for Me

At the beginning of the year, I posted 3 goals that I had for myself this year, professionally.  One of those goals was to network more and develop a PLN.  I am happy to say that I have been doing that through the use of Twitter.

Twitter is an amazing tool for professional learning.  I have gotten so many great ideas in the few short months that I have become a tweeter.  I have participated in many chats, some as a "lurker" not saying much and some as a participant sharing ideas.  

Last night, however, I took a giant step and MODERATED a chat for the first time!

At one of our district mini-sessions on twitter, we talked about chatting and how we, as a district, should chat more since our elementary and secondary librarians never meet together.  Well, that was all that needed to be said to get my little wheels spinning.  I sent out an email to the librarians saying that I would like to have a chat about the management and check out of Nexus tablets that a lot of us had gotten from a bond.  I set a date, time and hashtag and hoped people would "show up".  Last night about 10 of us chatted for about 45 min.  Sharing concerns, ideas and brainstorming management of these eReaders that we were going to be checking out to students.  

What I loved most about the chat was that there were some new chatters that had never even posted on Twitter before.  They saw how easy it was to become involved, even when their intention was only to lurk.  I am hoping that we will have many more opportunities to do this within our district as all librarians know that while this is the best job in the school, it is also the loneliest in the sense that you are the only one on your campus.  

Now on to learn about Tweetdeck...

Connected Librarian Day

I am finding so many cool things to help me grow as a librarian from being connected on Twitter. Last night I participated in two sessions in the Connected Librarian Day Conference.  

 These sessions were streamed on Blackboard Collaborate.  The first session was "When Sherry Met Matthew: Finding Your Educational Soulmate and Helping Kids Rule the World.  This session was presented by Matthew Winner and Sherry Gick.  These two are an amazing team who are not even in the same state.  Matthew is in Maryland and Sherry is in Indiana.  However, the connected on Twitter and planned some connected activities with their students and are what they call "educational soulmates".  I love that term!  After a tremendously successful collaborative experience they cal "Earth Pals", they are opening the same type of experience up to others in their GeniusCon arena.  Read more about it on Sherry's Blog.  

The second session I participated in was Jennifer LaGarde's (aka Library Girl) "Imagining Library Spaces of the Future Today".  I heard Jennifer speak at our Texas Library Association Conference last spring.  She is an amazingly inspirational speaker who makes changing the face of libraries seem easy.  In this session, she talks about ways librarians can help students become thinkers and learners, solve big problems, engage and collaborate.  My favorite quote from this session was "in libraries of the future students CREATE instead of CONSUME".  I haven't figured out what that looks like in my library program yet, but I am sure I will get plenty more ideas from my new PLN on Twitter!

Technology Tuesday: Tweet! Tweet!

It's official!  I'm a "tweeter"!  I have tweeted 8 times in the past week about things going on in my library.  I just decided to jump in and see what happens.

I signed up for a twitter account last April at our Texas Library Conference when I went to a session about the "Nerdy Book Club"and immediately regretted it.  While I was pretty sure that the presenters, Cynthia Alaniz @utalaniz and John Schu @MrSchuReads, were speaking English at the presentation their twitter posts were in a completely different language.  Full of @, # quick phrases and links to websites.  I could not decipher and immediately vowed never to go there again.  

But then, I came back to school in August and got curious about it again.  I opened the shunned app on my phone and searched for a few of the other librarians in my district and started reading the things they were posting.  Now it wasn't so foreign.  They were just posting about the things happening in their libraries.  After "lurking" for a week or so, I worked up the courage to create an account for my"professional" self.  Then I started asking questions to my go to girls for social media... Cari Young @myschoollibrary and Angie Oliverson (Ms.O Reads Books). (I even FB instant messaged my director on a Saturday night).  She sent me to this blog Summer Learning Series 2014.  Here Todd Nesloney @TechNinjaTodd, a principal and tech guy extraordinaire, challenges his teachers to learn something new every week.  It was great!  I loved reading his personal story about twitter and he links to some other great resources about getting started.  And so off I went...

My First Tweet

Besides informing my community about the things going on in my library, I can already tell twitter is going to help me with my professional goal to network with other librarians and teachers.  

You can follow me @laffinglibrary

3 for Thursday: Goals

(I know I am posting this on Saturday, but I had every intention of posting it Thursday until real life got in the way.)

Every year, the librarians in my district have to submit 3 goals that we have for our library programs that year.  And I must admit, that maybe once or twice I didn't put a whole lot of thought into them.  But going into my 11th year as a librarian, I figured it was time to take my librarianship up a notch, so here are 3 of my goals.  

Goal #1:  Professional Development

As I grew to have more years in the library under my belt, I became comfortable with what I was doing in the library and didn't not feel the need to seek out a lot of "extra" professional development (and unfortunately Pinterest doesn't count as PD).  This year, I am going hunting for some new opportunities to take me out of my comfort zone as well as opportunities for presenting to my staff.   

Goal #2: Technology

The teachers at my campus all received 3 iPads per class last year and a SMART board this year.  Last year, I did a lot of modeling of iPad lessons, apps and integration and this year I want to continue to utilize the iPads as much as possible but also model advanced uses and integration for the SMART board.  

Goal #3: Networking and Professional Learning Communities

Last spring, I let my poor blog slide.  I am recommitting to blogging multiple times every week as well as networking with other librarians and teachers through other forms of social media.  

What goals have you set for yourself this year?