EdTech New Year!

On Saturday, January 7, sixty-three Saddleback Valley teachers joined three administrators and four guests from outside SVUSD for a day-long educational technology workshop. Organized by Instructional Technology ToSAs Jen Anderson, Kathleen Shafer, and Amanda Taylor, the EdTech New Year session started with a brief and inspiring keynote address by San Diego teacher Jeff Heil on “Technology, High Expectations, and the Art of Relationships”. Attendees then had their choice of sessions, on topics such as

• Seesaw Learning Journal for elementary and secondary classes,
• Screencasting for Teachers and Students,
• Preparing for Performance Tasks (led by Alison Couch),
• Discovery Education Tools,
• Twitter as a Personal Learning Network (led by Kathryn Martin),
• Google Forms in the classroom,
• Breakout EDU,
• Sketchnoting,
• Digital Notebooks, and
• Google Classroom.

The workshop was created to help meet teachers’ demand for professional learning around educational technology within the constraints caused by the lack of substitute teachers. The weekday pull-out sessions that the department has held throughout the school year have been popular and well-attended, but teachers expressed a desire for greater capacity. Many teachers on Saturday mentioned how much they appreciated not having to write sub plans and not worrying about being called back to their classroom at a moment’s notice. Teachers were paid for their attendance.

Evaluations from attendees were very positive, with many indicating that they would like additional Saturday sessions.

I've heard many excellent keynote speakers (at an NCTE conference and many, many keynotes at the annual UCI Writing Project winter conferences), but my expectations for the keynote today were low. After all, I thought, how great can a keynote on technology be?? I was SO, SO WRONG! Jeff Heil made me laugh (frequently) and moved me to tears (even more)! He was perfectly polished yet relaxed and personal. His thoughts about "learning over grades" and, especially, empathy resonated with my heart.

I hope that additional trainings are offered. There were several sessions that were on the agenda today that I was interested in, but which conflicted with other sessions that I wanted to go to. Would love to come back and attend so that I can learn how to use the other programs.

I am planning to utilize the Discovery Ed site with my kids and look into the many SOS activities that I can implement. I LOVE the idea of sketchnoting and am excited to practice myself and find a way to incorporate into my classroom!

I am creating a digital breakout to use for a professional development to introduce my colleagues. I'll be using all kinds of Google Apps to create this and I feel like I learned some valuable things to help guide me in digital breakout site creation. Also, I created a 6-frame comic on Google Drawings and discovered that I can have students use this for a variety of activities.

I'm going to use the Cardboard Challenge as a STEM project for Open House/Fundraiser.

It was just right. Thank you for providing this on a Saturday.

The Instructional Technology team is tentatively planning to hold another Saturday workshop day in March or April, in addition to ongoing weekday professional learning sessions.