Before I talk about my failure, I want to explain some background. First, my school district participates in this thing called Melt, which multi school districts from around the area participate in. There are a ton of different professional development sessions on various topics and you choose which ones you want to go to. Second, the 2014-2015 school year was my first year teaching. Third, my first year I signed up for 3 sessions, 2 one hour sessions and 1 two hour session. I went to my first two sessions which were nothing special and then I went to my third session which was going to be on GBLT. Everyone filed into the session and we waited and waited and no presenter showed up. One of the organizers of the event then showed up and explained that the presenter would not make it so I asked what people were interested in learning about from the session. Based on their feedback I volunteered to teach the session. I had just taught this topic to my 9th grade health classes and had a presentation already put together for that so I logged in and presented using that material. The session went really well and I got a lot of good feedback. Now that you have the background information I can explain my failure. This year I was asked to present at Melt in January. I said I would do it and came up with two different presentation topics to present on, Organization and Technology Tools. As I typed up the descriptions I knew I wanted them to be as interactive as possible with more time to apply and less time of me talking. Here are the descriptions for both of my sessions: 21ST CENTURY ORGANIZATION OF LEARNING SPACES In this session we will go over some different organization techniques and some management techniques that are student-centered as well as some that are teacher-centered. We cover both digital organization and learning space organization all while keeping our 21st Century students in mind. Come with an open mind and collaborative spirit. The presenter will adapt presentation to meet the questions and needs of audience but overall format will be approximately 20-30 minutes of lecture, including a TED Talk and sharing of pictures as well as explanations of how the presenter currently applies 21st Century organization in her middle/high school classroom, with the rest of the time open for questions and collaboration. All content areas and grade levels are welcome because many of the management and organization techniques covered during the session can be applied to any content area as well as grade level including elementary, middle, and high school settings. COOL TECH TOOLS & WAYS TO IMPLEMENT AND USE THEM In this session, we will not only learn about a variety of tech tools, we will also learn how to use them and ways to implement them into our classrooms. The format of this session will be 10-15 minutes of presentation with the rest of the time for hands on application and sharing of ideas, questions, and concerns. The tools we will cover include Plickers, Weebly, Explain Everything, Google Slides, Piktochart, Schoology, Twitter, Remind, Tackk & Smore. Even if you are familiar with how to use the tech tools listed above, I encourage you to come and learn new ways on how to use them in your classroom and share how you are currently using them with others. If you have no idea what any of those tech tools are or if they even exist, I encourage you to come as well and learn how to use these cool tech tools. Please bring your own devices including but not limited to cell phones, iPads, chromebooks, laptops, etc. Bringing your own device will allow you to get the full experience of using these different tools plus you will already have it set up and ready to go for use in your classroom. Bring a collaborative attitude and you will be sure to walk away with at least one cool new tool to bring technology into your classroom. With my descriptions in mind, I then created a website for my sessions instead of the typical PowerPoint route. I created the Cool Tech Tools page so that it could be self explanatory & have all the links they needed. I also included how I used each tool in my classroom. I planned nothing for the 21st Century Organization because I wanted to see what they wanted to know (I went back and added links after the session based on what we talked about). Below I have screenshots of the website and a link to the site. Now comes the day for presenting. I received the last two slots for the day, which I now know are not ideal, and found out I was in computer labs for both sessions. I got into my first session, 21st Century Organization, and set up. This lab was huge and not ideal for the vibe I wanted this session to have which was more a conversational type of vibe. I asked them what they were hoping to get out of the session or wanted to know and that got the conversation started. Most of the feedback I got was positive with one negative feedback. My takeaways from this session is to definitely ask what they want to know again, but have them post somewhere like a Padlet (either anonymously or not) so that everyone could share what they wanted to learn without having to talk. That would also help me organize my presentation and make sure I hit everything they wanted to learn. I also would prefer to not do this session in a lab and make it a BYOD so that if they want to organize while I present they can or they could just listen. My next session was Cool Tech Tools which was the last session, right after lunch and 35 people were signed up. I was more nervous for this one. I wanted to stay true to what I had said in my description 10-15 minutes of presentation and the rest of the session to implement and share ideas. I had a lot of material to get through in 15 minutes, so I talked really fast plus I was nervous and I talk fast when I'm nervous. I also use humor when I am nervous. I tried to give a quick overview of each site. I didn't give them the link right away (which next time I would as they walk in). Once I got done giving an overview of all the tools on the site I opened it up for questions. No one really had questions so then I gave them the website URL and said that they could explore. Some of then sat there for a little bit and didn't do anything and then left. Others picked out the tools they were interested in and asked me questions. After the session was over, I felt that it had not gone as well as I had hoped but it was't awful. The feedback I received agreed with my feeling because there were some negative comments as well as some positive comments. Some of the feedback included:
After I received the feedback I posted this apology on both the Melt 2016 home screen and the Cool Tech Tools page: "I apologize for those who found me rude and unprofessional. I was nervous as it was my first time presenting at Melt but that is no excuse. I truly love my students and have passion for what I do. What you saw was not a good representation of who I am as a person and as a professional. I hope you will consider coming to another session I present. I appreciate your feedback and will be using it to improve my presentations in the future! I realize should have explained myself better at the beginning of the session as to why I was going so quickly through the material. I created this resource to be used to explore individually rather than requiring me to explain everything for you to understand. I hope you will still use this resource and find it helpful. If you would like to contact me or give me more feedback on what I could do to improve my sessions you can fill out the form below. Thank you to everyone who attended my sessions! I sincerely apologize for disappointing you." I hope that the people who attended my session saw my apology and would be willing to come to another session I present. I also would like to thank the people who left me comments for their honestly because it has taught me what I need to work on. I sincerely appreciate everyone's feedback. I have learned a lot from this failure but it has not detoured me from presenting on professional development. I will try again and keep the feedback I received in mind.
For everyone reading this, please use the website I created as a resource. Here is the link again! I included a lot of information about what each app is & how to use it in the classroom plus links to tutorials, videos, the actual websites, examples, etc. I also keep this updated! I recently moved the tabs around different from the picture above and added information about the new feature for Quizlet.
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So now that it's summer I have a little (more like a lot) more time to work on things. Recently I updated the aesthetics of both my class website and online teaching portfolio as well as updated some of the content on my portfolio. I am very pleased as to how they turned out. If I haven't said it before, I'm going to say it (again) now, I LOVE Weebly! They all look so clean and professional! I have the links to both sites above, but I will post some screenshots of how they look now as well. First us is my Teacher Portfolio. I wanted to simply this site and update my content. I chose three fonts and one color, purple, my favorite color of course and for the theme I went with Journey. I love that the tabs move as you scroll down the page. I think the new aesthetics showcase my qualifications so much better now! Next is the class website. I wanted to make my site less busy and less girly. Although I love making things girly, I try not to go too crazy because I know it can be a turn off to the young men in my classes. I think I accomplished both with this final round of editing. I went with only two colors, black and blue, and three fonts. The main heading is Komika Axis, titles are Oswald, and everything else is Raleway. I thought the fonts I had before were a bit much (and kinda girly) so I'm very pleased with my new choices. As for the theme I had before, I think the background got to be too much with the pattern and colors. I like having the white background, I think it puts the focus is on what students are there for, the content and links! I also changed my email signature. I added the URLs to my web portfolio and blog and decided to delete the quote I had on the last one. I love the quote I had on the old one but I like the simplicity of this one better with just one image. If you are wondering what the old versions looked like take a look back to my post from last December. Unfortunately, I didn't post pictures of what my portfolio previously looked like but I can tell you the current version is better!
Overall what I went for with all of these changes and updates was to de-clutter and simply. The way everything was wasn't terrible, but to me they felt overwhelming to look at with too many colors, patterns, fonts, etc. Less is definitely more!
I haven't posted on here in a while again as somehow this semester is crazier than the last, but I'm surviving. So I've learned about this instant response tool at MELT day back in January. The presenter only briefly mentioned it but I was intrigued so I looked into it and I love it! Below I have embedded the smore I created for one of my online classes in order to share "my favorite tool" with my classmates. Check it out!
I am pretty proud of my class website so I thought I'd share that with everyone here! I used Weebly to make this site (I love weebly). I choose Weebly because there were no ads, it looks professional, it is not cluttered, and it has an easy to use interface for designing/creating. Each class has its own tab where I embed a weekly document with what we did in class, papers given out, and assignments turned in or assigned during that week. Also along the side of each classes blog I keep class specific links such as for class recordings, turn in dates for notebooks, etc. I have a resources page that I have links to all kinds of things that students need access to frequently such as AR Test, online grade book, school website, Achieve 3000, etc. Below I have included screen shots of my website as well as link to my site if you'd like to check it out for yourself!
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AuthorI teach 7-9 Health Education & Computer 7 in rural southwestern Minnesota. I love using technology in my classroom and teaching students about how to live healthy and informed lives.
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