2016 Mock Caldecott Project

I saw this tweet from Mr. Schu sharing his 2016 Mock Caldecott list on Goodreads and knew immediately I wanted to do something with this next year. I shared the tweet with the reading coaches and elementary librarians and got to work.
I sat down with one of the elementary librarians and we made a plan. Next year each class will print out this poster to display in their room. As they read the titles with their teacher or librarian they add a star or sticker to the poster. When they are finished they will vote for their favorite as a class. The librarian can display the books and the classes favorites. When the ALA Youth Media Awards are announced the classes will find out if their favorite was the winner.
The titles are going to be shared with the art teachers so that they can tie in the books with some of their lessons as well. In addition, reading coaches will have the opportunity to use some of these titles with their lessons.
I'm going to work on reading each of them over the summer and make a list of some technology tie-ins for each title. This is my working document. I would love for you to add any ideas or suggestions you may have.
Do you host a mock Caldecott in your school? I would love to hear all about it.

Get a Jump on Technology: Summer PD

After reading this post from Alice Keeler's blog, we were inspired to put together a summer technology professional development course.
We decided to use Google Classroom so that our teachers would also be exposed to using this amazing, new tool. We wanted each task to be something that would help our teachers get a jump on next year so we named our class "Get a Jump on Technology"

The four tasks that we are asking our teachers to complete are:

1. Google Forms
Create a useful form for next school year. Example: a student introduction form, reading interest survey, learning styles inventory, parent night survey, etc
Create a QR code for your form. Post QR code to Google Classroom.

2. The 4 Cs: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking

Watch this video that summarizes the 4 Cs. Then take one of your lessons and increase the use of the 4 Cs using this lesson template. Share your lesson on Google Classroom.

3. Technology Stations/Centers

Watch this video from Learning in Hand. Using some of the examples provided create at least three station task cards and share in Google Classroom.

4. End of Summer Presentations

Use one of the following apps to create a presentation about what you did this summer, Adobe Voice, Adobe Clip, Adobe Slate, Book Creator, Haiku Deck, Flipagram, Pic Play Post. Share your presentation on Google Classroom and on Twitter using #a1summerchallenge.

Immediately after sharing this challenge I had 8 teachers sign up in Google Classroom and a few that already finished their first task. I'm looking forward to seeing the amazing things that the teachers create this summer.

What do you do for PD over the summer? I would love to hear your ideas. Thank you Alice Keeler and Tony Vincent for inspiring us!

iStudent Technology Group

The instructional technology team will be taking over our student technology group for next year. We wanted a fresh start so we changed the name to iStudents. Our teacher technology leaders are iTeachers so we thought that name was a natural fit.
We sent out an application form to all of our rising 9-12th graders. Besides the basics they were asked to share an example of when they were responsible and to rate their leadership, punctuality and attitude. Applicants had to submit two teacher's names for recommendations and to create a multimedia project explaining why they wanted to be in the group and how they would contribute to the team.
This is the flyer that was sent out to the students.


After reviewing and scoring the applicants we selected 20 students from our three high schools. This is a Thinglink we put together to introduce them.


We spent one of the staff development days in March working with the group. This was the schedule for the day:

8:30 - Selfie PicCollage posted to Padlet Wall

Intro Questions

9:15  - Create Presentation for Goals for iStudent

9:45  - Share Presentation

10:15 - White Elephant App Gallery

11:15 - Introduce School Project

11:30 - Lunch (discuss school project)

12:00 - Troubleshooting with the Techs

12:30 - Group Multimedia Project

2:00  - Share Projects

2:30  - Moving Forward, Expectations, and Survey

After sharing their introductory Pic Collage to the Padlet Wall and a few icebreaker questions, students were randomly split up into group based on which tool they would be using to present to the group. The options were Haiku Deck, Thinglink, Keynote, Flowvella and Smore. They had to share their goals for the group, expectations and a few fun ideas for the conference.
Each group presented and we were impressed with their goals. Every group shared the concern that they felt the iPads were not being used to the fullest potential in the classroom yet and they wanted to help our teachers and students learn to use them in more powerful ways.
We told the group about the App Gallery planned for the conference and they used the White Elephant game to choose which app they wanted to work with at the conference.
After lunch and some basic troubleshooting with our three iPad technicians we grouped the students by school. They were asked to decide upon a project for next year and put together a short presentation to share with everyone.
My area's group decided to bring back the news show to the high school and include tech tips and apps regularly. Another group decided to create a monthly newsletter using Smore to share with teachers that would include apps and tech tips and tricks. The final group decided to create professional development to lead teachers away from Power Point. Each group had to share their idea and include the ISTE standard(s) their project addressed, how they would implement their idea and a timeline for their project.
Finally we wrapped up the day by assigning jobs for the conference such as help desk, photographer, lead blogger, app gallery tables, etc. The two fun projects they chose for the conference were a green screen booth on the morning of day one and karaoke at lunch on day one.

I'm looking forward to working with them at the conference in a few weeks, presenting at state conferences with them this summer and helping them implement their project next year.

Teacher Technology Badge Update

The instructional technology team wanted to recognize those teachers that went above and beyond in their participation in the training we offered this year. We have been giving out badges for participation. Here is the original post for all the details on the badges. We sent an email asking all of those with at least 5 badges to take a picture of their badges and tweet using the hashtag #a1techabadges
We are going to select one of these teachers at random from each of the three areas and give them a new iPad case at our conference in June. You can see the hashtag feed here:
#a1techbadges Tweets

I was very happy with the number of teachers that have already shared their badges. This is definitely something we will adapt and use again with our PD next year.

Teacher Appreciation Week

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week I sent this Buncee card to all of my teachers and gave them these adorable, home button stickers from Amazon. They were a big hit! How did you celebrate?

Meanwhile in K-2...

Next week our state testing begins, which means our teachers from 3rd grade and up will be unavailable. The instructional technologists decided to use this opportunity to reach out to our kindergarten through second grade.

I made this Buncee card and sent out to all of my K-2 teachers.

I now have fourteen lessons lined up next week. I'm so excited. The lessons range from Shadow Puppet animal research projects, green screen in Keynote, Popplet character descriptions, Buncee books, Chatterpix opinion writing to Telestory weather reports. Next week will be tons of fun.

Honoring Choice in Professional Development

Giving our students choice is important for engagement in our classroom. It is equally important when planning and offering professional development sessions for teachers. The instructional technology team is currently planning the district end of the year conference and we wanted to ensure that our teachers had plenty of choices. In addition to offering several sessions for each time slot we also have some exciting non-traditional activities available.
1. App Gallery
2. Innovator's Lounge
3. Share Sessions
4. Appmazing Race

With the help of our iTeachers and iStudents, we put together an App Gallery. The app gallery is similar to a vendor hall at a conference, but instead of selling a service or product our teachers will be highlighting their favorites apps. iTeachers were asked to choose one app, then create a short presentation sharing what the app will do, resources, and ideas for the classroom. Our conference participants will pick up a card upon entering the gym. On the card there are ten stars. They will have the stars stamped as they visit at least ten different app booths. Teachers will earn a technology renewal credit for visiting the stations. We contacted the app developers and requested swag so that we could have freebies as each table. The apps that are included are: Showbie, Kahoot, Padlet, Tiny Tap, Thinglink, Stick Around, Venn, Timeline, iMovie, Keynote, Pages, Shadow Puppet, Smoop, Buncee, Canva, Doceri, Pic Collage, Word Study Apps, Pear Deck, Haiku Deck, Flowvella, SeeSaw, Digitwhiz, Socrative, Desmos, iTunes U, Charades, Teachers.io, Blendspace, Stop Motion, Remind, and 3D Gallery. I will share pictures and feedback after the event.

Too often we hear about lots of tech tools at a conference, but then never have time to meet and plan with our colleagues about how we can use them in the classroom. This year we wanted to offer our teachers a time to do this. The instructional technologists will be taking turns facilitating the Innovator's Lounge so that our teachers can meet with one another and put together ideas for next year.

Last year was the first year that we offered SHARE sessions for our teachers. Each grade level and subject area was scheduled a time and given a room so that they could get together with their peers from other schools and share favorite lessons, tips and tricks and plans for next year. They were a big hit last year so we are offering those sessions again this year. One change is that our administrators will be facilitating those sessions to help get the conversation started and keep it going.

We were inspired by this article in Edutopia to put together an Appmazing Race. The race consists of 10 different tasks that teams of two or three teachers complete to earn an extra technology renewal credit. We will also be recognizing the winning team with prizes at our awards ceremony on day two. You can see our task list here. One of our iTeachers will be monitoring Twitter that day for submissions and answering questions for teams that have any kind of problem. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the teachers put together. It should be a lot of fun.

How do you honor choice in your professional development offerings? I would love to hear about your ideas.