Category Archives: Guest Blogger

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.

 

Conference, Guest Blogger, Services

TIES 2018: Rachel Miller

This is a guest post written by Rachel Miller, Instructional Technology Specialist at Sartell Middle School. Do you need a scholarship to attend a conference?  Apply today! 

This year was the second time I attended the TIES conference, but it was my first time attending as an Instructional Technology Specialist focused on supporting teachers in their technology integration journeys, as opposed to attending as a classroom teacher. As such, my favorite takeaways from this conference were those that I knew I could share with my colleagues for use in their classrooms.

I attended sessions that might be of interest to the language arts teachers in my building, including sessions on podcasting, engagement tools, and media literacies. I’m excited to further explore and encourage the use of PearDeck in the classroom to increase student interaction while using slideshows. It was a tool that I was vaguely familiar with before attending TIES, but I had not had extensive experience with it. The work time provided during the session allowed me to explore the tool in a much deeper way. I am excited to use it and introduce it to teachers!

In thinking about how to apply lessons and concepts learned at TIES to my work, I am aware that I need to fight the urge to immediately share new ideas with colleagues. Instead, I will strategically try to incorporate ideas and strategies through conversation and planning in order to best meet staff where they are at currently. Overall, I found this conference to be rewarding and energizing for my own professional development.

I am grateful to the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange for their support of my professional endeavors!



Conference, Guest Blogger

CMLE Scholarship: Picademy!

This is a guest post written by Angie Kalthoff, Technology Integrationist for the St. Cloud School District. Do you need a scholarship to attend a conference? Check out our Scholarships page!

The first day of Picademy was spent learning about the Pi, tinkering with program starters, and getting to know the people around us. We had time to work together on projects of interest and time to work alone.

I demystified stop lights by learning how to write a program using Python to create my very own stop light!

 

 

Day two of Picademy allowed us to gather in groups with a similar goal. My group had a goal of using a sensor, camera, and live streaming a video.

Our team project. Our goals were to write a program to trigger a camera situated by an office door, to turn on based on motion and live stream a video of who was at the door. We thought this would be helpful to see who is at the door even when we are not physically able to be there. We also thought it might prompt conversations with colleagues on how we created it thus allowing us to talk about computer science and computational thinking.

We learned that the sensor was very sensitive and that it was triggered to be on at all times. We then decided to create a button that people could push to turn the camera on. We were able to get our program to work to the point of getting the camera to work by touching a button but we were not able to live stream it in the amount of time we had.

Our group split into two focuses. We had people who worked on creating the structure to house the camera and a group who worked on creating the code. While I was drawn to wanting to create the structure (something that I have more have experience with), I pushed myself to work through the code (an area that I have just started tinkering in).

At the end of our allotted time, we were able to share our work with our peers in Picademy. We did a live demo of what we had accomplished so far, talked about our path to get where we were, and what we would like to do if we had more time.

Picademy was a great experience. While it was only two days, a quick two days, I had a lot of hands-on time to tinker with the Pi and think about how I could bring it into classrooms. My biggest take away is that when the project has a real connection to the creator, it is easier to push through the frustrations. I really wanted to create a spinning shoe rack on the first day of the Picademy. My real life need caused to me to work through my frustrations instead of giving up… but that is a whole other blog post.