This is a guest post written by Tom Kuhn, Instructional Technology and Library Media Specialist at Sartell High School. Do you need a scholarship to attend a conference? Check out our Scholarships page!

TIES once again proved fruitful for me both personally and professionally. One thing I learned was a reading program called Actively Learn which helps students understand, retain, and enjoy what they read with this online literacy platform. Teachers can use ready-made content or use their own content and then “chunk” the text into more digestible segments by inserting questions where they want. Teachers can also add sidebar content with images or content and then link that information to the corresponding words in the text. For instance, if the content referred to self-driving cars and there was mention of Henry Ford, the teacher could link to an image and text of a Model T.

Fake news was another session that I found interesting. As an educator, I’m concerned about what I think is a trend by our students to use more social media and fewer credible sources for both their personal and academic work. This session helped me understand this trend with some history and some pointers of what to do.

I presented a poster session this year on some reading support tools such as ReadTheory, Rewordify, and Snap and Read. It was the first time presenting a poster session, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I had a steady stream of 1-5 various people for an hour and 20 minutes. I found the informal discussion and sharing conversations inspiring and helpful. We really did learn from each other.

On a personal note, this was my last conference as I am retiring at the end of the year. I thank CMLE for offering this scholarship so we educators can continue to model how important lifelong learning really is.