ISTE 2018 Resources and Reflections

I've been back from ISTE for a week now and *almost* had enough time to reflect on the experience.

 It was a very busy few days, but it is still one of my favorites! Chicago was fun. It wasn't my favorite conference set up, but the non-conference food/fun was top notch.

We started with the pre-conference Seesaw Connect event. The opening Ignite Sessions were great and we made some great connections. Cara and I added several ideas from the opening session to our annual plane ride home list of ideas. (More on that later!)

If I present a session, my school will let me attend the conference. Knowing the ISTE conference acceptance rates I decided to submit multiple proposals. As luck would have it, all my proposals were accepted. It made for a hectic few days!

(Photo credit to @madbenjenmar)

Cara posted the link to resources from our AR + Green Screen = App Smashing Success session on her new blog. Be sure to check it out!

She also made this video for our session. It gives an overview of two of my favorite STEAM projects and collaborations.

I finished off Monday afternoon at the Tynker booth and then at the Google Teacher Lounge.

Here is the Tynker and Google Classroom: A Perfect Match! presentation I did with Daniel Rezac. Google had someone sketchnote each of the session in the Google Teacher Lounge. Post conference Google for Edu has been sharing a few of the sketchnotes on Facebook and Twitter each day. I cannot wait to see the sketch from my session!

Debbie and I presented Special Project Enrichment Courses: Giving Elementary Students a Choice in Learning on Tuesday. The resources are available here. After that poster I ran into Leslie Fisher in the bathroom. I overheard her talking about the next session she was presenting. I was disappointed that I didn't make it to any of her sessions this year due to my schedule, but I sent Debbie. Wouldn't you know it, she shared a good music resource for the session I recommended to our music teacher. 🎶

I had only 30 minutes between poster sessions. I was exhausted after 4+ hours on my feet, but I met some wonderful people. STEAM in Action is always one of my favorites to present.

I have to say one of my highlights was getting to see Nicole Rubin present during the Young Educators Ignite Session. This is just the first few seconds of her Ignite. I was in charge of recording and got a notification on my iPad that covered the time stamp at the top. I panicked and thought it was not recording when in fact it was recording. Oops! So for now the video is in two parts. Sorry Nicole!

I spent most of my time presenting and did not make it to many sessions, but I still have a list of takeaways. Last year Cara and I planned all the LEGO SPEC courses that we then presented this year. Here are our second annual ISTE reflections.

Links mentioned: 

Googsmacked  * Flipgrid * Merge Cube * Ozobot Certified Educator * LEGO Master Teacher * Certified BrainPOP Educator Program * Embed Code in Book Creator

Links mentioned:

TAG - Seesaw Ignite by Sophia Garcia Smith

Links mentioned:

Wonder Projects - Seesaw Ignite from Michelle Flicek

Everyday Excellence - Seesaw Ignite from Andy Leiser 

We also wrote out two pages of plans for our next big project ideas, but those aren't ready to share yet. Hopefully those will be blog posts of their own in the next year.

Another of my favorite parts of ISTE is meeting people and making connections. This year I got to meet some of my favorites IRL.

I've become a big fan of the #ShukesandGiff podcast.  I was the one that took this picture for them at their poster. I may have geeked out about about meeting them. I'm still disappointed I missed their Ignite sessions, but I think the idea behind their poster session may be a good fit for my school. We've been talking about documenting/sharing what we do using Google sites and their district has done a great job of doing just that.

I've long admired the projects that Tricia Fuglestad has shared on Twitter. I was thrilled when I got to talk to her at our AR + Green Screen poster. She even posted about one of my projects in her Ten Takeaways from #ISTE18 blog post. I have already tried out her idea for drawing with Keynote for iPad. I also have plans this summer to try out the DoInk Animation app. My 8-year-old has seen me playing with both of these tools and is begging to have a turn.

It was a busy few days, but I loved it. I've made new connections and am already making plans for next year!

New School Year in the STEAM Lab

At the end of this week I sat down and realized that I had enough missed "tweets" to warrant a blog post. There were so many wonderful things happening in the STEAM Lab this week!

Full disclosure, I also saw this week that my blog bio said I had two children. My youngest will be two in the next couple of week, so I decided it was time to pay the neglected blog some attention! Either way, this week was blog-worthy!

Monday started with the eclipse. The school purchased glasses for all our students. The STEM coordinator also made these signs.

Once school was out for the day I was able to take my kindergartener and my second grader out to view the eclipse with me. It was pretty special!

I decided to bring back this project again this year. Instead of just self portraits like the onse in the picture below, I asked students to draw themselves as scientists. I started by asking what a scientist looks like. I typically got the answer I expected - a man in a white coat and googles. From there I showed the search results on PBS LeanringMedia for "Scientist Profile" and picked  few students to select a scientist to learn more about. Interestingly enough, very few of their drawing ended up wearing white lab coats! I have parent volunteers putting the project together next week. I'm excited to see how it comes out!

I always try to start the year with digital citizenship. A could of years ago I purchased the Nearpod version of the Common Sense Media curriculum. I love that I don't have to copy any pages before class starts. It is the perfect way to start the year in the STEAM Lab.

This year the elementary specialists got together and decided to try something new. I still see all elementary classes on a rotating basis, but we added a fourth day to the rotation. Instead of traveling to specials with the whole class, on the fourth day students go to Special Project Enrichment Classes (SPEC). Each quarter students have a different SPEC Class. We even had a team of teachers that have given up their planning once every four days in exchange for a stipend.

This quarter my SPEC class is all about LEGOs. My fourth and fifth graders get to travel into the high school STEM Lab. It has been a lot of work (and will be another post), but it has been worth it so far.

It was a full week, but it was the kind of week you look back at and feel good about. I've spent the weekend trying to distract myself from watching storm coverage and worrying about my mom and sister. I grew up in the Houston area and am praying for all those that are trying to deal with the effects of Harvey. Hang in there my Texas friends!

Have a great week!