Tag Archives: CMLE Scholarship

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!



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TIES 2018 Scholarship: Jason Menth

This is a guest post written by Jason Menth, STEM Integrationist at Talahi Community School. Do you need a scholarship to attend a conference?  Apply today! 

Once again the TIES conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Minneapolis didn’t disappoint. Thanks to a CMLE scholarship, I was able to attend two days of influential keynote speakers, learn from amazing educators from around the country, and make new connections.

My role as a STEM Integrationist at Talahi Community Elementary School in St. Cloud is dependent on my knowledge and skills of current best practices. Though TIES is recognized as technology in education, there are many sessions to attend that inform all areas of education. For example, I attended sessions on the design thinking process, STEM infused learning centers, personalized professional development, problem-based learning, and innovated approaches to learning.

My goal in my position is to bring real-life problem-based learning and application for our students. I often connect with our school’s media specialist to pair the best stories, be it fiction or non-fiction to bridge the learning and help make connections with our students. We’re also fortunate enough to have our school’s makerspace in our library. Students follow the engineering design thinking process to tinker and build a community project for our school.

Two of my favorite sessions were on the design thinking process and problem-based learning. Books and other forms of media such as presentations and video are vital to demonstrate the design thinking process and learn the necessary background knowledge to real life problems that need to be solved. Since attending the conference I’ve already reimagined our makerspace and ordered new books to help promote the design thinking process and bring real-life learning inside the walls of our school.

Luckily, I also got to present at TIES in their makerspace playground. I was able to share our engineering design process and project-based learning our students do at Talahi. The compliments and discussions were so positive that I know what we’re doing at our school is contributing to student success.

I can’t thank CMLE enough for approving my request to attend this conference. CMLE connected me with so many educators that will advance my practice and bring forth new learning for our students and staff.

Conference

TIES 2018 Scholarship: Tom Kuhn

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.