Edscape Conference October 13, 2012

Yesterday was probably the most invigorating and exhausting day of professional development I have ever experienced.  After following people on Twitter since this summer who have been promoting the Edscape Conference in New Milford, New Jersey, I knew I had to sign up and see some of my favorite Tweeters in person because they have inspired me to make changes in my classroom - including Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_Principal), Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby), Vicky Davis (@coolcatteacher), Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1).  They didn't let me down - I learned so much in such a short amount of time that it will take months for me to really process it all, but I will get there.

Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher) was the keynote speaker for Edscape, and her hour-long talk felt like five minutes.  It was so powerful to hear her personal stories and the reminder that the only person I can change in education is ME - I can't change the standardized tests, the politicians that make education policy, or the access rules that the local informational technology office makes for my school district.  The only thing I can change is me.  This was such a powerful reminder, especially as I get into the fall/winter slump of cold weather and shorter days - the bane of my teaching existence. 

All of the tools and ideas I took away from yesterday's conference are a bit much for one blog post, but I will mention a couple.  Vicki's talk showed how she has her students converse with classrooms throughout the world and work with them on global projects - a flattened classroom as she calls it.  I would like to get my classroom to be a flattened classroom - to have my students interact with others throughout the county, the state, the nation, and the world.  One of the session presentations I went to was about Skyping and Google Hangouts presented by Bill Krakower (@wkrakower) - here's his blog post on his latest "Mystery Location Call" which is one way to flatten a classroom.  In his presentation, he demonstrated how to conduct a mystery location call in Goodle Hangouts by chatting with Jerry Blumengarten and Paula Naugle (@plnaugle).  I need to brainstorm on how to amp it up for a high school classroom, but I love the idea of Skyping or having a Google Hangout with an expert in history, or maybe even skyping a national park tour. 

I also learned about some tools that got me very excited about organizing all of my edtech/history content in one location.  There are LiveBinders (which I personally find to be a little unweildy and prefer using ones that are already made) and Evernote (which I love and use everyday to organize my lecture notes, historical research websites, and edtech tools), but I learned about Symbaloo, an organizational tool that puts tiles/buttons that link to my favorite websites that I can organize however I want - I can have a symbaloo for EdTech tools, one for the Revolutionary War era, one for the Jacksonian era, one for current events in history news, etc.  And the great thing about organizing things this way is I can create a public link to one of my symbaloos and link it to my class website - that way my students can use them for research and class projects.  I was so giddy in the presentation by Bruce Reicher (@breicher) yesterday that I almost screamed!!  Here's his public link to a symbaloo that explains how to use Symbaloo and Pinterest.

I don't know how far I'm going to get this year in incorporating all of the things I've learned from Twitter as well as Edscape, but I am going to try my best...because I can only change ME.  So far, I have my students blogging on a weekly or bimonthly basis (depending on the class) and using Twitter for extra credit outside of the classroom.  I'm taking baby steps, but I'm going to do my best because my kids deserve the best.