This is a guest post from Jenny McNew, Media Specialist at Talahi Community School. Need a scholarship to attend a conference or participate in Professional Development? Apply today! 

I would like to thank CMLE for the scholarship to attend the TIES 2017 Conference: What’s Your Story! Both Keynote speakers Ken Shelton and Jennie Magiera delivered great keynotes on the how and why of sharing your voice.

In the past I have attended many TIES conferences and each year it gets better. As a Media Specialist in a working school library of very diverse learners this year’s title of “What’s your Story” really spoke to me. We have so many staff and students that really need the opportunity to share their voice. We need to believe that each person has an important voice, and we need to be a listening ear in order to create a community where everyone is welcome, seen, and heard. It really made me think of all the opportunities I can help provide so those I come in contact with have the knowledge and technology to share their all important voice while being mindful of the implications of sharing that voice on a digital platform. Ken Shelton referred to it as a digital tattoo which is so true.

What I love about TIES is it isn’t just about the newest and coolest technologies but it has embraced the application of those technologies in learning situations. I attended several sessions where again Leslie Fisher saved the day by showing me some cool new tools that will make my everyday job easier, or the presentation by Shelly Sanchez which gave me insight on putting together digital citizenship activities.  

This year I presented in the “coding playground” giving me the opportunity to share some of our story using Blue and Bee Bots, Lego robotics, and Edison robots. It was evident that even though I am not sure we are doing anything “exceptional” to someone else it is worthy and cool, once again proving that we all have a story to tell.

Thank you CMLE for providing the opportunity to attend this amazing conference. The ability to attend professional development is priceless!

This is a guest post from Amanda Holstrom, Instructional Technology Specialist/Library Media Specialist at Sartell Middle School. Need a scholarship to attend a conference or participate in Professional Development? Apply today! 

Ties 2017 was a very intense and exciting conference. The sheer amount of people and the ideas that were being shared was enough to excite all learners. The focus of the keynote speakers was “What’s Your Story?” and the message was to focus on sharing ideas around the world and letting students share their learning with an authentic audience.  Jeanie Magiera, one of the Keynote speakers, did a wonderful job of explaining the impact of storytelling and how using technology to share her ideas and learning has helped her personally and professionally. This idea that sharing is encouraged rather than trying to keep thoughts and ideas inside was very motivating and gave me the reassurance that our new independent reading curriculum is beneficial to students.

In regard to reading/independent reading practices a shift was made for the 2017-2018 school year. Whereas past practice had teachers assign a given amount of AR points for students to earn by reading and taking a test of recall, after discussion on best practices in reading and reflection on the Common Core Standards a change was made to honor choice independent reading time and conferring practices into daily lessons. This overhaul on student reading and subsequent shift of the focus from points and books to sharing stories has made a huge impact. Students are required to read but they choose the novel as well as meet with the teacher to discuss their reading and learning that is taking place. Students are also encouraged to share their reading with others. This new shift in the reading curriculum has shown growth in student reading and natural conversations centered on reading are taking place.

Another speaker that I felt will help me in the classroom was Dave Burgess. He offered two sessions: Teach Like A Pirate, which explained his book and how he approached education in his classroom and Teaching Outside The Box, that covered how to use creative ideas in your classroom to harness student learning potential. One of his ideas was to capture trends and use them in your classroom rather than trying to ban them from school.  His examples included using fidget spinners for probability math problems, science experiments with data collection, writing exercises that focus on poetry for spinning, and learning about trends and inventions in social studies. His main message was to look at learning with lenses of opportunity rather than rules and rote memorization.

This is a guest post from Brad Scherer, Instructional Technology Specialist at Sartell Middle School. Need a scholarship to attend a conference or participate in Professional Development? Apply today! 

The theme of TIES this year was “Tell Your Story” and it really resonated with me. I think as educators we let others tell our story too often. The stories they tell are at best incomplete storylines and at worst, untrue versions of a story we live everyday. My favorite takeaway from the conference was seeing Dave Burgess (author of Teach Like a Pirate) present and his message of how we need to bring passion and lots of various hooks to draw our students into learning, which will make school something special for our learners! This session completely motivated me to come to school with the intention of making the learning experience for my students something extraordinary.

As a result of attending TIES, I know two immediate takeaways that I will use in our Makerspace (The HUB), our library, and school. The first is getting started using MinecraftEDU. We plan to implement this in a language arts classroom very soon and then see how else we can leverage it to improve student learning. The second takeaway is helping our teachers, students, and district tell their stories better. I feel like this might be more important than we even know since our students are currently curating their lives using social media. I think if we as a staff and a district can lead by example for our students, it may help our students grow into better people, which is more important to me than mastering content and specific state standards!