All posts by cmleguestblogger

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Report from the Student-Powered Conference: Amanda Holstrom

This is a guest post written by Amanda Holstrom, Instructional Technology Specialist and Apple Teacher at Sartell Middle School. Need a mini-grant to help purchase new materials or help fund a program? Apply now!

At the Student Powered Conference, Sauk Rapids, Sartell, Little Falls, St. Cloud, and Albany students got together to share their ideas and learn from each other. Logan, a senior from Little Falls, presented the opening session, discussing his path into coding and how it has changed his career options and his high school coursework. He set the tone for the day to be open to learning new things and sharing knowledge.

The students ran the show, creating and presenting their knowledge and
passions. Some of the student led sessions covered topics on Astronomy, How to Become an Author, Breakout Boxes, Coding, Virtual Reality in the classroom and more. These sessions offered the Tech Team students the opportunity to learn and experience education in a way that is not available in every district in central Minnesota.

Students that attended these sessions took the ideas presented to them
back to their schools to discuss as a tech team how we can implement this type of learning into our curriculum. Our Tech team decided to focus on bringing more VR/AR (Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality) options into our school. The students looked into finding VR experiences that covered topics they were currently learning and shared them with their teachers. Another group of students is learning about Merge Cubes and what they can create using CoSpacesEDU to show our staff how education can reach beyond the classroom.

Our next step to share what we learned is at Education Done Differently at Sartell Middle School in April. The Sabre Tech Team will be presenting alongside other staff and students on the ways we have changed the way we educate our students.

Conference, Guest Blogger

Report from the Student-Powered Conference: Audrey Thornborrow

This is a guest post written by Audrey Thornborrow, Technology Integrationist/Instructional Coach at Mississippi Heights Elementary School. Need a mini grant to purchase materials or fund a program? Apply here!

“That was amazing!”

“Can I go again next year?”

“This is the coolest thing we’ve done all year!”

These are just a few of the exclamations I heard from students as we left the 2019 Student Powered Conference which was hosted by a group of Central Minnesota technology integrationists/instructional coaches (MidMN EDU). The conference took place at the Sartell Community Center.

The whole day is truly powered by the students. Sure, the adults get them bussed there, make sure the projectors are working, and order the donuts, but the day wouldn’t be successful without the hard work from the students.

Our day started off with a keynote from a senior from Little Falls High School. He spoke about connections and how making connections with different people can open up doors of possibilities in your life. He did an amazing job and was so brave to get up in front of over 200 kids to share his message.

After the keynote we had 3 different time slots for different sessions such as How to Solve the Rubiks Cube, Art Internships, 3D Printing in the Medical Field, Breakout EDU, Cookie Decorating, and my favorite Cyber Bullying.


The Cyber Bullying session was a very powerful session because Nolan, a 4th grader at MHES, stood in front of a large group of students and told his story about his experience with be bullied, how it felt, and gave concrete ideas on how students can help stop or prevent bullying in their school. His peers were so respectful and kind. They asked great questions, offered positive feedback and gave Nolan a standing ovation along with hugs, fist bumps, and high fives. After his session, Nolan told me he felt like his favorite book character. He said, “my favorite character was rich, and famous, but most of all he was love, and that’s how I feel right now. Loved.”

We are so thankful to CMLE and their generosity for providing funding for the Sartell Community Center. Without your generosity, this magnificent day would not have been possible.


Conference, Guest Blogger

TIES Conference 2018 Scholarship: Amanda Holstrom

This is a guest post written by Amanda Holstrom, Instructional Technology Specialist and Apple Teacher at Sartell Middle School. Do you need a scholarship to attend a conference or participate in professional developme?  Apply today! 

This year at TIES, I really enjoyed hearing about the path of change that Kimberly Bryant is creating for girls in coding all over the nation. She is currently leading the charge of Black Girls CODE based in California. Her inspirational and supportive methods are encouraging girls to get involved in the tech world.  She shared her own path through technology and how that has impacted her daughter and now the nation with the creation of Black Girls CODE. These groups of girls create innovative tech solutions for real world problems and share their creations with others. Starting the conference with a message of inspiration allowed me to look for ideas that will inspire those I teach with.


I looked for sessions this year that focused on leveraging the technology we already have in our schools in a way that deepens student learning.

I learned about using Schoology to create opportunities for students to have choice and voice in their learning as well as providing a method for teachers to organize and assign tasks digitally.

I am looking forward to implementing grading rubrics, folders for organization, calendar management and using Google slides for running agendas. All of these tools will help students and teachers work together to create a learning environment that provides more learning opportunities.

Conference, Guest Blogger

TIES Conference 2018 Scholarship: Jenny McNew

This is a guest post written by Jenny McNew, Media Specialist at Talahi Community School. Do you need a scholarship to attend a conference?  Apply today! 

This year I attended the TIES Conference in Mpls titled: Just IMAGINE. The conference began each day with guest speakers. Jaime Casap on Monday and Kimberly Bryant on Tuesday. Kimberly is the founder of Black Girls CODE. Jaime has worked for Google for many years and was very inspiring as he talked us through the changes that have happened in technology. His message that education disrupts poverty and education equals success spoke to me as I reflect on how we teach students what being educated actually means and what learning looks like today. He also talked about how we must come to a certain peace with the past and move forward in the future.

At this year’s conference, it was easy to imagine yourself as a learner. This conference has evolved from a technology conference to a learning conference and it presented me with some great takeaways personally and also things that I could share with my staff.

I attended two sessions that Leslie Fischer presented and every year I am amazed at her techiness and practicality for both teachers and learners. Her first session I attended was on virtual reality. Although it is a cool tool, in my current position I’d have to figure out how to implement it. But I did attend a poster session on Google Street View which brought some of the things out that Leslie had talked about and I think that would be more doable in a small group setting. Leslie’s session on Tools You Could Use Tomorrow gave me a wealth of information and great resources to not only teach with but just things to make any job easier.

I also attended a session on MakerSpaces. We have been having some issues just trying to make our MakerSpace more effective and efficient for all involved. It allowed me to step back and reassess how we want to go about providing that space for students.

In the afternoon I attended Stop motion Math for Elementary. This was a great session, and as a school with one-to-one iPads, we can begin right away. Students can show what they know while engaging with technology.

The session I attended on computer science and math brought me back to Scratch. Many years ago when I first got interested in technology it was Scratch that made me realize how much fun coding was. It’s funny how we always go forward sometimes with the better bells and whistles and yet the things that really caught our interest bring us back to the grassroots of why we really enjoyed something. I look forward this year to working with Scratch with kids again and using it in a mathematical way while teaching computer science. Scratch 3.0 can be used on iPads and will be a great addition.

We had the pleasure of meeting the CEO and team from Edji.it which is a program that allows students to interact with text. We are always looking forward to ways to interact with technology and literacy.

I presented again this year at the conference in the playground on playful learning. I brought some new cool technologies that reminded me with students sometimes it’s about the Play – Yay! I purchased Turing Tumble which really pushed students to problem solve and think through binary operations. It was created by Paul Boswell from Minnesota. There was a lot of interest in this non-tech simulation and I know my students really like it.

I also did some learning myself with the augmented reality app Quiver. I’ve already brought that back and used it with some students. You get to do some pretty cool things with the 3D shapes that come off the page.

Thank you CMLE for having your scholarship program.

 

Conference, Guest Blogger, Services

TIES 2018 Conference: Ryan Hiltner

This is a guest post written by Ryan Hiltner, Instructional Technology Specialist and Apple Teacher at Sartell High School. Do you need a scholarship to attend a conference?  Apply today! 

This year I attended the TIES conference in Minneapolis for two days. It is with the generosity of the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange that I was able to learn so much that I can bring back to my school district.   

While attending various sessions by educators from all of the conference pedagogy and tools were discussed. Some of the items I took back from the conference can be used in individual classrooms and other items can be used as an entire district.

I was also able to showcase some of the work that the teachers in Sartell are doing by presenting two different sessions on Digital Breakouts and Implementation of Google Slides for more than just Presentations.  

One of my favorite sessions was a session on student and teacher feedback. The focus was on getting rid of that red pen and giving feedback online instead. This allows the people involved to give audio and video feedback and be able to start a continuous dialogue. By working with digital feedback there is also an immediate response when the feedback is given. Students are no longer required to wait until the next day to get that feedback.

The conference was once again an insightful two days and I appreciate being able to attend.