One of my goals this year in our library is to foster global thinking and global collaboration. To connect with these types of opportunities for our students, I seek out connections on Twitter as well as in Google Plus communities such as GlobalTL and Connected Classrooms. I also offer opportunities within the projects taking place in my own school for other people around the world to join in.
This summer, I became involved in a conversation with Joyce Valenza, Shannon Miller, and Paul Fleischman about how books could live beyond the closing of the cover. What if a book inspired us to take action in the world? What would those actions look like around the globe? How could they be documented? How could they be shared? What would it look like if the author engaged in conversations about the actions being inspired by the book?
This September, Paul Fleischman’s book Eyes Wide Open: Going Beyond the Environmental Headlines was published. It’s a different kind of book because it doesn’t give our young people a prescriptive list of answers to solve the environmental problems of the world but instead to take an inquiry stance. It inspires our young people to listen closely to the environmental stories being shared about our world and to uncover stories of their own. It calls our young people to take action on those world problems and realize that even at a young age they can make a difference in our world.
We’re living in an Ah-Ha moment. Take 250 years of human ingenuity. Add abundant fossil fuels. The result: a population and lifestyle never before seen. The downsides weren’t visible for centuries, but now they are. Suddenly everything needs rethinking–suburbs, cars, fast food, cheap prices. It’s a changed world.
Eyes Wide Open explains it. Not with isolated facts, but the principles driving attitudes and events, from vested interests to denial to big-country syndrome. Because money and human behavior are as important as molecules in the environment, science is joined with politics, history, and psychology to give altitude on this unprecedented turning point. It’s a time of bold advances and shameful retreats, apathy and stunning innovation.
What better time to have our eyes wide open?
An Eyes Wide Open Google Plus Community has been established to make connections for global collaboration around the book. Paul Fleischman has also created a site to house headlines, projects, and conversations about the book. He wants this to be more than a book that you read and close, but instead for it to be a book that inspires action in the world.
Also from Joyce’s blog, there’s a great list of ideas of how you might use Paul’s book with students.
What sort of reports might students contribute?
Take photos (and create a gallery) that document population rise or consumption levels or innovations being used to address these challenges. Attempt to document how your eggs, milk, farmed fish, and meat are made.
Make a video describing a local citizen science project. Document a plastic bag banning campaign, a local pollution issue, or your own attempt to go vegan for 30 days.
Interview someone in city government connected with water, transit, city planning, or emergency services. Or a biologist, park ranger, or science teacher. Or a religious leader whose church has taken a stand on the environment. Or your state senator, state assembly representative, or an aide to your congressperson. Or fellow students or neighbors to get a sense of how average citizens view the situation. Google+ Hangouts might be a perfect venue for archiving these interviews!
Write a description of one of your area’s key issues and how it’s being dealt with. Join with one or two others, each tackling one part of the project: research, interviewing, editing. Would your local newspaper be interested in the result?
Do a survey of your city, finding out where your water comes from, how your electricity is made, where your trash goes. Prepare to make many phone calls and to ask follow-up questions. More fun with a friend.
Annotate local newspaper stories, adding commentary that lets us see how the global trends and mental habits described in the book are playing out locally. Feel free to refine my thinking.
Remix media and create digital stories around an area of local interest.
Inspire a meme to invite continual, global reinterpretation around an environmental prompt
Submit a field report. Work prepared for school assignment is fine. Take time to review and revise. Once you’ve posted it on Google Docs, YouTube, or another platform that all can access, send a description to fieldreports@eyeswideopenupdates.com. Include a bit about yourself, how you came to the topic, and a photo of yourself or something connected to the report. If Paul finds it well done, he will add it to the roster, put a pin in the map, and maybe even give it a shout out in his blog.
Connected librarians have a huge opportunity with this book and the many communities that are available to us. We are the people within our buildings who work with every student, teacher, and family member within our school. If we collaborate, then we connect our entire school communities with one another.
November 15 is America Recycles Day. The week of November 10-14 would be a great week for us to begin to connect our voices with one another around an issue that really affects us globally. Paul’s amazing book Eyes Wide Open could be a piece that we could use to spark conversations around the globe. It could also be paired with a plethora of other picture books and informational texts on environmental action. More than a conversation, our connections could push our young students to take action in our world, and those initial connections could lead to a continued connection between schools around the world in the name of environmental action.
Here’s what I hope to do:
Connect with schools throughout the week of November 10-14 via Skype or Google Hangouts
Read an environmental text together
Have each school identify and explain an environmental issue in our school or community. For us, it will most likely be the amount of waste being thrown away in our classrooms.
Have each school exchange their issue and brainstorm possible next steps for one another. Wouldn’t it be nice to hand your problem over to someone for a few minutes to see the problem through their eyes? That perspective might be the very thing you need in order to take a next step in your problem.
Share our brainstorming with one another and document suggestions in a digital format such as a Google doc or Padlet.
Commit to reconnect at some point to share what actions we have taken, what has been successful, or what new problems have surfaced.
Let’s do more than just connect our students for a day. Let’s connect our students to work on an issue that has an impact on our world. As part of Connected Educators Month, let’s start thinking of how we can connect our students in meaningful ways throughout the year and begin planning those connections now.
As you make connections, create action steps, and make an impact on your world, share it!
September 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day. There are so many fun pirate stories out there, and each year we seem to discover a few more thanks to the connections we make around the globe through Google Hangouts and Skype. Planning a day of connections like this definitely takes some time but students love talking with people around the globe, sharing a story, and learning a bit about one another. It always seems to reinforce the idea that we aren’t alone in our bubble of routines of day to day life. There are other people out there doing the same things that we are and quite possibly they are doing those things in different ways. I love the spontaneous conversations that take place on days like this that you could never plan through a standard or a lesson plan. Students always bring up a question or a comment that makes the day special.
This year, 8 classes came to the library for Talk Like a Pirate Day and we connected with 6 different schools in 5 different states.
We connected with Edie Crook in Gastonia North Carolina to read the book No Pirates Allowed Said Library Lou. We had a great conversation about “treasure” and students took turns stepping up to say what treasure meant to them. We were delighted with words such as being kind, family, friends, Skylanders, and baseball.
We connected with Jan Pelias through Google Hangouts in Frisco Texas to read the book How I Became a Pirate. It was fun to connect with someone in another time zone because we could talk about how time is different at the same moment around the world.
We connected with Melanie Thompson in Jefferson City, Missouri to read the book How I Became a Pirate. Melanie’s students had researched pirates and they took time to share all of their facts. This made our students very curious about pirates as well. I have a feeling all of our nonfiction pirate books will be checked out for a long time. I also love how Melanie embraced her inner pirate as we chatted with each other through Skype chat prior to our connection!
We connected with Okle Miller in Tampa, Florida to read the book No Pirates Allowed Said Library Lou. Tampa has a pirate festival called Gasparilla . Students loved hearing how pirates take over Tampa during this festival and kidnap the mayor (all for fun). The class we connected with even called themselves pirates and used the word “pirate” as an acronym for their classroom expectations and beliefs.
Both of our PreK classes came to the library for their first visit of the year. In class, they made pirate hats and hooks as well as added some pirate mustaches to their faces. We read the book Pirates Go to School and made a class video chanting the pirate chant at the end of the book.
We connected with Carol Scrimgeour in Essex Town, Vermont to read the book No Pirates Allowed Said Library Lou. We noticed that all of the kids were wearing warm clothes, so we had a great conversation about how cold it had been in the northeast. It was sunny in both places but with a very different temperature.
Finally, we connected with Shawna Ford in Texas and she read a new pirate book we had not heard before: No Bath No Cake Polly’s Pirate Party. Now the students want to get it for our library.
Before each connection, we looked at a map from our school to the school we were connecting with. We talked about distance, travel time, and also all of the decisions that go into choosing your route for a trip. We also created a Google tour of our trip using Google Tour Builder. After each connection, we wrote a summary together.
Finally, we spent a lot of time creating pirate sentences, phrases, and even conversations and practicing them aloud. Students had access to a list of pirate vocabulary words as well as multiple pirate stories to get ideas.
We used Flipgrid as a place to record our favorite pirate expressions. Students also had a great time trying to imitate a pirate voice and pirate faces and gestures. Take a moment to listen to them because they are quite entertaining! I loved how this evolved from a sentence writing activity into a practice of fluency, oral speaking, and performance. Again, Flipgrid became a place for us to crowdsource our voices with the voices of our connecting schools.
I love how these events connect us with new people around the world. This year we connected with some old friends, but we also met some new teachers, librarians, and students we hope to connect with again. I also want to continue to think about days like this to build long term collaborative relationships.
International Dot Day is one of our favorite days (weeks) of the year. It gives us permission to be creative and see what we can do just by making a mark. It also connects us with so many classrooms around the world. Classes are always looking to connect on this day, and we have made many collaborative relationships with schools because of this one day of the year.
This year, we used Dot Day as a way to explore our goal of dreaming, tinkering, creating, and sharing. We explored Google Drawing, which was a new tool for most students. We used Dot Day as a time to tinker and see how Google Drawing functioned as well as how to collaborate on a drawing with another student or class.
We also used colAR mix again this year to make augmented reality dots. This year, I encouraged students to think more globally as they made their dots by embracing the them of “making your mark on the world” that is the essence of The Dot. Students were encouraged to design a dot that represented their talents, hopes, dreams, and passions. I loved this new twist on a tool that we used last year because it revealed so many stories from students. One student drew a picture of an airplane flying through the clouds because of his dream to be a pilot when he grows up. Another student drew an astronaut and UFOs because of his desire to explore space. Another drew her whole family because they are what she loves in life. Some students chose to highlight their creativity as a way that they make their mark by designing unusual dots with their favorite colors. These were empowering stories because they allowed students to have a voice to share something personal about themselves in a way that they might now have shown before.
One amazing thing that happened while students were using the colAR app was how they discovered different ways to scan their dot. It started out as what some people might see as a mistake. A student’s hand was on top of their dot while they were scanning their image, and the hand became a part of the rotating sphere on the iPad screen. This resulted in an uproar of excitement as sharing began and the idea spread like wildfire. Soon students were trying to put their faces on their spinning spheres. Others stacked towers of crayons on top of their dot and tried to see if that would scan into the 3D image. All of this happened because of an opportunity to tinker. When we give kids a space to explore, they figure out amazing things and they willingly share and teach others what they learned. They get excited about their learning and they want to do more. I bet that these students would have spent an extended period of time continuing to experiment with colAR mix to see what else they could figure out, and they would have done this without getting tired or bored. These are the things that days like Dot Day reveal.
We had numerous Skype connections. Each one had its own unique twists and conversations between students and teachers. In many of these Skypes, we collaborated on a Google Drawing dots after reading the book. This included dots with our friend Okle Miller in Tampa, Edie Crook in North Carolina, and Crystal Hendrix in North Carolina (just to name a few). Sometimes this was live during a Google Hangout or Skype and other times it was after we disconnected. One of our hangouts was a large hangout between Matthew Winner in Maryland, Nancy Jo Lambert in Texas, Donna MacDonald in Vermont, and Esther Uribe in Texas. It was fun to read The Dot to students in so many states at one time, but what was even more fun was drawing with all of them at the same time! We definitely did some tinkering with this one. Many of us learned of the challenges of younger students but found ways to involved them even with computer-use difficulties. The students loved seeing drawings “magically” appear on our shared dot.
Our multi-school collaborative dot
With Jennifer Reed in Massachusetts, we accidentally deleted all of our work on our collaborative dot. The kids were in a panic, but it was a fantastic opportunity to do an impromptu lesson on the power of revision history in Google Drive. We were able to recover our work and learn an important trick. We even talked about how revision history is one way that work is never deleted, which can be a positive but also a negative if you have written something that you wished you hadn’t.
Mrs. Clarke’s class had a Skype connection, but we weren’t able to do a collaborative dot with our connecting class. Instead, we split the class in half at our 2 projection boards and they created a dot together as a class. They got just a bit competitive as they tried to cover up each other’s work, but even this was a great opportunity to talk about how to work with others on a doc without being disrespectful of the contributions.
Mrs. Clarke’s class competitive dot
Some classes that we connected with had already spent a great deal of time being creative, and they shared with us dots that they are going to physically mail to us. Jenny Lussier in Connecticut had colAR dots as well as Morse code greeting cards. We can’t wait to decode what they say! We also discovered with Jenny that there’s more than one version of The Dot floating around out there.
It has been fun to discover today that The Dot has different words depending on the version of the book you have! #dotday@peterhreynolds
Cathy Potter’s students in Maine read the book Ish to our students and shared their own illustrations for the book. We had a great conversation about the connections between both books.
Students and teachers alike love this day, but I do leave this day with a wondering. I’m thinking so much this year about global thinking and global collaboration. This day is filled with thousands of Skype and Google Hangout connections around the world. We connect. We read. We dream. We create. But then what? We leave one another until the next big event. I’m by no means being negative about Dot Day. I’m a huge advocate, but I do wonder about why we don’t build upon these connections we make. If we are really going to “make our mark” on the world, shouldn’t we be taking some actions together beyond connecting, reading, and creating? I would like to gently nudge us all to think about this. I’m just as guilty. I connect every year and then I move on, but I can’t help but carry this on my mind, reflect on it, and consider what more we might do beyond today. Think with me! Let’s keep our dots connected.
Each year our 5th graders take an entire day to explore the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Each year, the students become more and more removed from the topic because they weren’t even born at the time of the tragedy. The events of September 11 and the impact they had on our war on terrorism are part of the 5th grade social studies standards, but we also spend a great deal of time at our school on social emotional learning and how we support one another in a community.
Each year I write a blog post about how we teach September 11th, and each year there is a new addition or a new angle in which to explore the day. This year, students opened the day in their classrooms by talking about everyday heroes. They shared where their own families work and how each of us can be an everyday hero.
Then, students split into 4 groups and rotated through 4 experiences every 30 minutes which were facilitated by me and the classroom teachers.
Experience 1: Haiku poetry. With Ms. Mullins, students learned about the unlikely heroes of the day including dogs. They studied the poetry form of haiku and how a brief 3-line poem with 17 syllables can magically express a feeling or an image. They focused their haiku on heroes. They didn’t have to specifically write about the heroes of 9/11, but many chose to.
Experience 2: Response to tragedy from afar. With Ms. Selleck, students looked at how people around the country and the world responded to the tragic events of 9/11. It was a time that people wanted to take action and do something to help. Children wrote letters, drew pictures, and made cards. The Maasai people of Africa offered 14 cows as a gift for America. Ms. Selleck shared Carmen Agra Deedy’s story 14 Cows of America and students considered how people who weren’t even in our country wanted to help. This posed an interesting question of how we might respond to the tragedies taking place every day in other countries.
Experience 3: Heroes of 9/11. There were so many heroes that stepped forward on 9/11 and many of those heroes lost their lives in the process. At this experience, students took a look at many example of heroes and read the story Fireboat by Maira Kalman. Students learned about this old fireboat first launched in 1931 and how it was called to duty on 9/11 to help pump water to fight the fires. Students designed a drawing to represent the many heroes that took action on 9/11.
Experience 4: The events of 9/11. This is the most sensitive of the experiences for students because we all react differently to seeing the tragedy of 9/11. Over the years, I’ve developed a pathfinder of sites that explore 9/11 from multiple angles. There are interactive timelines, eyewitness accounts, actual video footage of the day, oral histories of memories from victims’ family members, virtual tours of the memorials, and cartoon videos explaining the events in kid-friendly language. We start with a video:
This video frames that on 9/11 we remember but we also take action to create good in the world. I invite students to view the various resources and reflect on what they might do to create good instead of evil. At the bottom of the pathfinder there is a padlet where students can record their actions that they want to take. During this experience, I always tell students that they don’t have to watch any of the videos. They can also take a break at any moment if the tragedy just becomes too much to handle.
This year, 2 new pieces were added to this experience. First, Gretchen Thomas, a UGA teacher in instructional technology, brought one of her #EDIT2000 classes to support students. This was a piece that I’ve always felt was missing from the pathfinder experience. September 11th is such a heavy topic, and I do worry about how kids are processing the information. With these UGA students, we were able to pair every 5th grader with a UGA student to have reflective conversation about each website, video, and story that students experienced. UGA students shared their own understanding of 9/11 as well as their own memories of being in elementary school when it happened.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about global thinking, global collaboration, and global perspectives. This year, I decided to make a Flipgrid well in advance of today. Through social media, I’ve been sharing the Flipgrid in the hopes that multiple people will share their own perspectives of 9/11. While there wasn’t an overwhelming response to share stories, the stories that were shared were powerful. The students in Gretchen Thomas’s class shared their own memories of being in elementary school at the time. These stories included very personal connections to the tragedy such as family members who were in New York on the day of the tragedy and a student coming into New York on a plane from another country and being diverted to Canada. Several librarians stepped up to share stories as well. Beth Miller of Georgia shared her story of working in the World Trade Center during the bombing in the 1990’s and how she had family and friends who were in the towers on 9/11. Her family made it but several friends did not. Elissa Malespina of New Jersey shared the story of her husband being in New York on 9/11. He was on one of the last trains coming into the city. It was chilling to think how many people have been affected by 9/11 in very personal ways. Even if you don’t have a personal connection, there are many stories about where people were when the tragedy happened. I wish that I could talk about every story on this Flipgrid because each one is meaningful in its own way. Please take time to listen to these stories and feel free to add your own.
This Flipgrid was a part of the pathfinder but it was also a place that students recorded their own thoughts at the end of the day. Students spent some time reflecting in classrooms. Then, they came out into the 5th grade hallway with iPads to record their reflections on the Flipgrid. Another of Gretchen’s UGA classes came to assist with this process. I had instructions typed up with the Flipgrid code and we got as many students recorded as possible at the end of the day. Students loved collaborating with students from UGA to create their videos.
I think that this project has such potential for a global collaborative project. What would it be like if students in another country shared the tragedies taking place in their own countries? What would happen if our students in the US considered how they could respond to the tragedies taking place in other countries? What are people’s perspectives on 9/11 from other countries around the world? What do everyday heroes look like around the globe?
My hope is that this project can continue in some way this year. If it doesn’t, I hope that next year’s layer that gets added on is developing a more global perspective on tragedies around our world and how we respond to those tragedies as a global society.
On June 25-26, 2014, I will travel to Atlanta to be a part of the Google Teacher Academy with 34 other amazing educators. These individuals come from all over the globe to be a part of this highly competitive 2-day professional learning.
The Google Teacher Academy (GTA) is a free professional development experience designed to help primary and secondary educators from around the globe get the most from innovative technologies. Each GTA is an intensive, two-day event during which participants get hands-on experience with Google tools, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in a supportive community of educators making impact.
We would all like to take a moment to introduce ourselves before we arrive in Atlanta. After the two days, I’ll be sure to do a post about my learning as well as begin sharing my personal action plan.
Here are the 35 Google Applantans! I invite you to read about us, watch our application videos, and begin following us on social media as we begin our journey to becoming Google Certified Teachers.
Mr. Seipel’s Site– somewhat defunct since my recent career transition
GTA video:
Introduction:
I am originally from Ohio and moved to North Carolina after graduating from Ohio University. Throughout college, I worked at a summer camp and in this isolated setting, I first used Google Docs way back in 2008. My first doc was the parent letter for my initial class. I arrived in NC and started in a rural high school English classroom, but I quickly began assisting my peers with using technology in their instruction. I met my wife at church in 2009, we got married in 2010 and had our son in 2012. We announced that she was pregnant with this photo and picked his name this way. Just a few months ago, I migrated from the classroom into my new role as an Instructional Technologist where I am able to work with our district’s 4,000 teachers and 55,000 students.
Interesting fact:
I was on America’s Funniest Home Videos as a child; I lost.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I look forward to get Googly with this team. I am in a district that does not use GAFE — although I have helped lead several districts to its adoption — so I want to experience applications of this suite and Google’s other tools — cough Classroom cough — in the hopes of convincing the powers that be to make the transition to GAFE.
I’ve been a Hawaii private school teacher for over 20 years and currently teach Theory of Knowledge in the International Baccalaureate Programme at Le Jardin Academy on the island of O’ahu. My involvement in the History for Music Lovers project on YouTube has led to my fascination with remix culture and social media, particularly in respect to education. I speak and run workshops internationally on new literacies, remix, transparency and creativity among other things.
Interesting facts:
I am blessed to be a breast cancer “survivor” (always hesitant to use that phrase), I live on a beautiful island but rarely go to the beach, I secretly want to be an OS system or cyborg, my signature colours are hot pink and black and I only wear black clothing, and I eat a cookie every morning for breakfast to start the day off sweetly. Oh, and a Philadelphian drag queen revue has covered my song in a live performance.
What I hope to get out of GTA:
camaraderie, connections, creative inspiration – and maybe a collaboration for a project involving GAFE.
I am the school library media specialist at David C. Barrow Elementary in Athens, Georgia where we expect the miraculous every day. I serve approximately 535 students in Pre-K through 5th grade. My library program is grounded in transliteracy, participatory culture, and students as creators of content shared with the global community. I make my own work and the work of my student public through my blog, social media, and connecting with libraries, authors, experts, classrooms, and developers via Skype and Google Hangout.
Interesting Fact:
I’m a huge Mariah Carey fan, and I may or may not have been gently pulled away by security when I gave Mariah a friendly hug backstage in Orlando in 2003. I’ll also be leaving my wife at home alone with a 2 and 4 year old from June 22-July 1 to visit Evanced Games and attend GTA and ISTE, missing our anniversary on June 25.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
Attending GTA will allow me to connect with more leaders in education, strengthen my own use of Google’s collaborative tools, and ultimately expand the opportunities my students and teachers have to connect and collaborate with people around the world. Collaborating between multiple locations and school cultures is complicated, and GTA will help me think about how to better facilitate this process for classrooms and libraries worldwide.
Bob Deneau
(Taken on a past trip to Atlanta at the CNN Center…I was younger and thinner back then)
After teaching 4th grade for 8 years and being a part of opening up a new school, I became an Instructional Technology Specialist and have served in that position for the past 7 years. This year, I moved up to support our middle schools and this was a great professional move. I love working with this age group and their teachers. I have been married to wife Michelle for 12 years and she is an elementary school librarian. Many of our non-educator friends are not sure how we can survive being home all summer together but it is great! When not exploring edtech related items, I enjoy golfing and as seen in my video, I can marginally “play” the guitar.
Interesting fact:
Although I have lived in the St. Louis, Missouri area my entire life, I have never been up in the St. Louis Arch (our #1 tourist attraction). This is probably because of my fear of heights and listening to the stories of my sister getting stuck at the top with our very interesting grandfather. One other interesting fact would be that I helped move a port a potty out of the way at the 2008 presidential inauguration so my group of 10 high school students could get into the DC mall area to see the speech. Being in charge of 10 students in a crowd of millions was one of the scariest things I have experienced.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
For me, GTA is all about making connections and learning with other Google enthusiasts. In my area, I have been able to collaborate with a number of Google Certified Teachers and I have seen how this program made them better educators. I want to experience this and grow as a professional. My newly acquired knowledge and skills can then be shared with my fellow Instructional Technology Specialists, 1400+ teachers, and 22,000 students as we enter our second year in using Google Apps for Education. Selfishly…I hope we get to look at Google Classroom too!
I currently serve as a Technology Integration Coach for Hoover City Schools in Hoover, Alabama. I’ve been in education for 17 years after working in business and for the military for 10 years. I’ve served elementary, middle, and high school students and teachers over the years. My husband is a math coach/tutor and we have 3 children ages 16, 14, and 11. We are a close family who love learning and playing together!
Interesting fact:
I have lots of interests. I have a pilot’s license but don’t really use it now. I’ve run 9 marathons and actually won two of them. I wish I could keep running but injuries prevent it. I coach Cross Country and Track and also Lego Robotics. I love theater and though I am better watching it than participating I give it a try sometimes – or at least for my Google Application video! 🙂
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I look forward to the collaboration and sharing and to all that I will learn from others. I also hope to find more efficient ways to share through my online presence which is a bit outdated at the moment. I can’t wait to see what others are doing and bring back new ideas to my district and state!
I am a High School Librarian serving a student population of 2600+ students in the upstate of SC. I am active in the American Library Association, American Association of School Librarians, South Carolina Association of School Librarians, and South Carolina Association of Educational Technology. My PLN spans many face to face and virtual avenues. I will begin my 29th year of teaching in the fall. I am a National Board Certified Teacher in Library/Media.
Interesting fact:
I’m an avid University of South Carolina Gamecock fan, and my husband seriously questioned my devotion when I said I was coming to GTA instead of the College World Series June 25.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
New connections, broadened understanding of technology integration, and great ideas to bring back to my teaching context.
My name is Chelsey Eminger. This was my first year as an Instructional/ Technology coach in Mentor, Ohio. Prior to that I was a first grade teacher for four years, a job that was very difficult to leave! Now I have the chance to work with risk-taking teachers every day while learning new things! I’m always ready to learn new, interesting things, especially when it comes to educational technology.
Interesting fact:
While hanging in Atlanta for GTA and ISTE, I’ll be leaving my husband alone with the dog for our anniversary!
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I am excited to spend time with others that learn and work the way that I do. I’m hoping for amazing conversations that spark ideas to take back to my district, that hopefully lead to conversations with my PLN online!
My name is Chris Aviles. I teach English at Barnegat high school in Barnegat, NJ. My class features advanced Gamification (including what might be the world’s first yearlong Alternate Reality Game), self-paced mastery, flipped learning, BYOD, and much more!
Interesting fact:
I survived Hurricane Sandy. We were without power for nearly two weeks. We ran out of food, water, fuel, and firewood quickly. Imagine Beyond Thunderdome set on the beach. It was like that… kind of.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
New friends, new ideas, and new practices to bring back to my classroom.
Educational technologist, movie fanatic, and all-around geek. Previously a 1:1 iPad teacher, my goal is to support both students and teachers on how to integrate technology into learning as a seamless part of instruction. As a Technology Integration Facilitator is to make sure teachers, students, parents, and are the community are properly prepared on the use of technology for classroom and personal use. My end goal is to empower anyone with the willingness learn on the use of educational technologies to connect, create, and collaborate in the 21st century classroom.
Interesting fact:
Recently finished my first Half-Ironman and Ragnar Relay (10 person team, 200 miles). On a side note, I hate the feel of styrofoam and chalk boards.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
Looking forward to connecting with like-minded individuals and broadening my knowledge of education, while also contributing to this ever growing Googly community. I want to build capacity of the educators I work with, helping them to take best instructional practices to another level in any way possible.
I am an Instructional Technology Coach at Waukesha North High School in Waukesha Wisconsin. After spending 12 years in the classroom as a Social Studies teacher, I made the move to a tech coach role last year to help improve teaching and learning at a systemic level. During my first year as a tech coach it was our first full year as a Google Apps school. Collaboration, creation, and communication skyrocketed amongst teachers and students. This past year was our first year as a 1:1 iPad school. Google Apps has been the bedrock of how we are trying to transform teaching and learning.
Interesting fact:
I have nothing interesting about me 🙂 Seriously though, the most interesting thing about me is the life I lead with my 3 kids and lovely wife. We go to Packer and Brewer games, go to Walt Disney World every year for Spring Break, and spend boatloads of time together. I am a super hero freak (check out my GTA Video) and tech nerd at heart.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
Honestly, most of us can learn tech pretty easy, but the ability to connect with like minded people is one of the biggest reasons I applied to GTA. Our Atlanta group, as well as the other GCT’s, are leaders in education, and the ability to network and develop leadership skills is very important to me and my development as a leader. But…from a nerd point of view I do hope we get access to Classroom early 🙂
I work as a Professional Learning Program Specialist for CUE where I organize and present at professional learning events around the country. Prior to accepting this fantastic job, I was the Lead Teacher for a K-8 Independent Study Program where I used GAFE and multigrade workshops to build community. I am involved in many different projects surrounding Educational Technology. I love to learn!
I want to build my Personal Learning Network, sharing with and learning from others. As a Professional Learning Leader, I hope to connect with others and discuss how educators can use Google to positively impact student engagement, collaboration, productivity, and achievement. I also hope to play around with and learn more about Google Classroom.
I am a Digital Integration Specialist with Horry County Schools in Conway/Myrtle Beach, SC where I get to help teachers learn how to effectively utilize and integrate technology into their classes and curricula. Prior to this position, I was a middle school English/Language Arts teacher for 8 years and in the final two I was able to pilot a 1:1 iPad environment. Currently my district is rolling a 1:1 personal device (iPads and Dell Venues – don’t ask about the choice of the Venues) initiative which will give all teachers and students from grades 3-12 a personal device. Though I miss interacting with students, I incredibly enjoy working with teachers and helping them learn how to use effective technology and web tools to heighten their classroom environment and inspire innovation and creativity within their students. In those sessions and in this movement to a 1:1 environment and digital learning, GAFE has been an incredible tool and in many ways the motivation and foundation of moving forward. I am also currently at the dissertation stage of my PhD in Education with a specialization in Educational Technology through Walden University, hoping to be completely finished by the Fall of 2015!
Interesting fact:
I played college football at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) and won a SEC West Championship in 2003 (technically we were co-champs with LSU that year) but it still count and I still got a really big, really nice, championship ring which I wear all the time much to the chagrin of my wife. 😉 More interesting facts: Speaking of my wife, I proposed to her in Disneyworld, in front of Cinderella’s castle, right before the evening parade, so she was completely surprised and everyone waiting for the parade gave us a very loud and excited round of applause (plus Disney gave us “Engaged” pins and Mickey and Minnie Wedding Mouse Ear hats!). Also, our wedding was outside at a beach resort and we danced down the aisle, with our wedding party, to Chris Brown’s “Forever” (video on Youtube if interested) which completely shocked all of our guests.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I am excited to meet and work with fellow educators who are motivated by educational technology and aware of the exponential benefits of incorporating effective technology into our schools. The ability to connect with such motivated, creative, and innovative educators is truly an exciting opportunity, especially under the leadership and of fellow Google Certified Teachers. Also, I am looking forward to expanding my PLN and my knowledge of the educational tools Google offers so I may bring back to my colleagues and teachers more ways to innovate and educate our students in a 1:1 digital environment. Speaking of which…maybe we can get an early look in Google Classroom, or if anyone has Google Glass, I am extremely interested and intrigued in the educational applications this type of technology offers.
I was a higher ed professor for eight years, teaching computers, business and English, in the USA and South Korea. It was in the ROK that I started using virtual worlds, or immersive learning environments, in order to provide a truly hands-on (well, cyberhands, anyway) educational experience for my students. I´ve maintained a Second Life cybercampus since 2006, plus OpenSimulator since 2009, when I switched to international K-12 schools. As of this fall, I´ll be the Technology Integration Coach for the American School of Guatemala, where, after 13 years of teaching, I´ll step out of the classroom to train teachers full-time.
Interesting Fact:
When the Tech Bubble burst in 2001, I was a systems analyst for an international software/consulting company, earning darn near six figures a year. The layoffs hit but I was unemployed for exactly one day. I got a gig teaching software engineering courses and realized I had missed my true calling in life. I met folks involved with teacher exchange programs and decided to change location as well as vocation. In addition to South Korea, I´ve also lived in Georgia and China, and now Mexico.
What I Hope to Gain at GTA:
My next school is one part of an organization that includes another K-12 institution and three universities! That´s right, a whole lotta Googlers! I´d like to get some tips on how to implement GAFE on such a large scale. Plus I just want to join a network of Google Gurus so I can stay on top of developments and swap ideas, tips, etc.
Dr. Frank LaBanca is a teacher, educational researcher, and change agent. He is the founding principal of Danbury’s Westside Middle School Academy magnet. Prior, he was the Director of the Center for 21st Century Skills at EDUCATION CONNECTION, he directed and managed the implementation of innovative Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math programs in 50+ middle and high schools across Connecticut. During his 16-year career in the classroom, Frank taught Biology and Applied Science Research at Stamford, Newtown, and Oxford High Schools. He has been recognized as a National Education Association Innovation Teacher; a GTE GIFT (Growth Initiatives For Teachers) Fellow; a RadioShack National Teacher for Excellence in Science, Math, and Technology; and the Teachers’ Insurance Plan Teacher of the Year. He was also recognized by Discovery as the National Outstanding Classroom Blogger for his blog Applied Science Research and was a global finalist in the best teacher blog category of the 2011 Edublog Awards. Frank adjuncts at Western Connecticut State University and the University of Bridgeport teaching Science Methods, Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis for Educational Research, and supervises dissertation research. Frank holds a BS in Biology, an MS in Science Education, and an EdD in Instructional Leadership.
Interesting fact:
Founding Principal of a new Magnet Middle School scheduled to open in September. Will be the first school in Danbury to operate 1:1, facilitated by using BYOD.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
Hoping to learn how to bring 1:1 to scale effectively using web-based strategies to make students better producers.
I am the instructional technology coordinator for the Cupertino Union School District in Cupertino, CA – Yes – the home of Apple. How I got here is a circuitous route – I was part of Tech for America in 1993 and started teaching middle school science in Oakland, CA. I got my masters in biochemistry from the University of Texas (Go Horns!). I taught for 5 years in Austin, met my wife, Cristina. I then worked for NASA as an education specialist in MN and WI, then CA for 5 years before returning to public education. I worked at the county office for 3 year as an education technologist before moving down to the district level where I’m having a great time!
Interesting fact:
I’ve been fortunate to travel a fair amount – lived in Germany for 4 years, seen most of Europe, saw southest Asia, the middle East, South Africa for the World Cup (I’ll be streaming games during any free time 🙂 I’ve been to 49 states, but am still missing the best one yet – Hawaii
What I hope to gain at GTA:
This is always a tough question -but I would say that it has already started – getting to know all of you and hearing your ideas, thoughts, brainstorming new ideas and knowing that I have a whole new group of educators to bounce ideas off. I’m never one to set certain expectations for a new adventure, but rather see what presents itself. I think the best will just be trading ideas, debating thoughts- of course I’d love a sneak peak of Classroom, but I’d also be curious to brainstorm ideas of what Google Glasses might bring down the road – what are some of the social issues it presents. And of course coming from Cupertino – finally I won’t be laughed at for having an Android phone 🙂
Hello new #GTAATL friends! I am a technology coordinator for the Red River Valley Education Cooperative. I also am a part-time adjunct instructor at the University of North Dakota. I have worked in education for the past 17 years as a teacher, technology specialist, and coordinator in both Minnesota and North Dakota. This month I also became an Authorized Google Education Trainer. I am originally from Cavalier, ND a small town in NE North Dakota with a population of just under 1500 people. I currently live in Grand Forks, ND.
Interesting fact:
I am a terrible driver. I am allergic to beer. I have a twin sister that I think I look nothing like, but everyone mixes us up. I once used my only personal day of the school year to stand in line and buy George Strait tickets.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I am excited to create a cohort of educators that share of a love of technology and learning. I also want to meet other Glass in Education Explorers to share and collaborate potential Glass projects.
After years of avoiding the inevitable of following in my mother’s footsteps, I left my cubicle and returned to school to eagerly earn a degree in Education. With a natural wanderlust, I moved to South Korea to experience, not just visiting, but living abroad. Within my first year, I was approached and offered a job in my field of study, Birth through Five years old. I jumped in with both feet and in a short three years, I fell in love with living and teaching abroad. For the 2014 – 2015 school year, I am thrilled to announce I will be teaching in the Early Years Centre at Vientiane International School, an I.B. World school in Laos.
When I’m not teaching, I focus my energy (in no particular order) on photography, volunteering, traveling, cooking vegetarian meals, good coffee or tea, listening to NPR, discovering new music, watching documentaries, blogging, connecting with new people, practicing yoga, and keeping in touch with family and friends.
Interesting fact/s:
In 2008 and 2009, I worked for the NBA Atlanta Hawks as a Spirit Squad member (aka T-Shirt cannon pro). Once, Spirit the Hawk, the mascot from Zoo Atlanta, swarmed the arena during the pre-game hype during playoffs. I’ll never forget the players scrambling and hiding behind each other, afraid to start the game, in fear of the hawk! Another time, a massive tornado hit the arena and most of downtown Atlanta. Parts of the rafters were dangling, yet no one budged — we had no idea what had happened. It was business as usual. The timer buzzed and we hit the court and threw our shirts! We were in for quite the apocoyptic scene as we exited that game! I have worked many jobs to survive my long journey through school, but this was definetly most memorable. Oh, and just a couple more things: 1) I don’t like shopping, ice cream, or chocolate. However, if the mood strikes (about once a year), I will buy chocolate ice cream. 2) Last Summer, I volunteered on an organic green tea farm in the middle of nowhere, Japan. I will never take another sip of tea for granted in my lifetime. 3) Brevity has never been my forte.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
My enthusiasm for Google Apps for Education (GAFE) grew from my attendance at the 2013 Google in Education Summit – South Korea. Esoteric by nature, the Early Years age group did not receive much attention at the Summit. However, a conversation with one of the Keynote Speakers left me encouraged and activated. With her specific advice, I returned to my classroom and began using even more Google. The result was so positive that I later presented my successful experience at the KORCOS Conference in 2014. My exuberance multiplied when I saw fellow educators’ faces in the crowd for I was not the only one eager to learn more about bringing this technology to our classrooms. What I learned this year has only scratched the surface. There is much more than needs to be shared on Google use in the Early Years setting, I just don’t know what it is. It is my hope that the Google Teacher Academy will teach me. In short, I’m ecstatic to be a sponge and am ready to learn anything and everything google-y there is to learn about Google in Education!
Since December I have been the Manager of the Instructional Resource Center at Georgia Regents University. In this position I work with both faculty and students who are studying to become teachers. I am blessed that I get to work with individuals as they begin their career in education. My hope is to expose our students to technology tools that will further enhance their teacher education program so they are truly ready to enter the classroom in this digital age.
Prior to the move to higher education I served as a Technology Consultant for CSRA RESA (Central Savannah River Area Regional Education Service Agency) and the National Science Center ETC (Educational Technology Center). While working as a technology consultant I served 12 local schools systems conducting professional learning with teachers and administrators at various schools. I began my education career as a middle school math teacher. My passion is sharing with teachers new technology ideas that will bring both sizzle and substance to the classroom.
Interesting fact:
At our house we celebrate a special holiday on October 31st each year. While most people celebrate Halloween we celebrate Hallowring. The tradition goes back to when my husband David and I were dating. As a joke during a halloween party David got down on one knee and gave me a ring pop I put it on my finger we all laughed took pictures and I ate the ring pop. The whole drive home I was so worried that someone would post one of those pictures on social media and I would have lots of questions asked at church the next day. David just smiled and continued driving me home. When he got out of the car he opened my door and in his hand was a real ring and he proposed. Since the first Hallowring we continue the tradition of dressing in costume and pass out ring pops. Last Hallowring David and I dressed as Google Maps. Check out our costume. Picture Link
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I have two main goals for attending the Google Teacher Academy.
1. Learn as much as my brain can absorb during the 2 days of the academy. I have found through conducting technology trainings that many people don’t know what they don’t know. I am open to any learning experience.
2. Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration… The collaboration has already began through the G+ Community and on Twitter but I really hope to have some additional times of strong collaboration to build a foundation for future collaborative projects.
I am the Library Media Teacher at Stocker Elementary School, in Kenosha, WI. Prior to taking a position at Stocker, I taught social studies at the secondary level for four years and earned a Masters of Education in Instructional Technology. I am dedicated to reshaping student learning experiences and providing professional learning support for teaching faculty. In my current position, I draw on my past teaching experiences to design inquiry-based learning experiences for the 500+ elementary students at Stocker. I am an advocate of digital citizenship and teach students the importance of their digital footprint and online safety. I produce a weekly segment for the Stocker News called “Tech Time” to showcase innovation and student work at the elementary school. I am also on the Kenosha Public Library Board of Trustees as the sole representative for the Kenosha Unified School District.
Interesting fact:
First of all, I am a huge fan of the Milwaukee Brewers and attend games regularly, each year hoping for a trip to the World Series, but always coming up short (I am cautiously optimistic about the Brewers this year given their great start). I love taking road trips around the country and focus on visiting historical sites, local shops and breweries/wineries along the way. I also enjoy road biking and walking my dogs for exercise. This past summer, I was able to attend the Paul McCartney concert when he was in Milwaukee with my mom, both of us are huge Beatles fans, and we had great seats in the 10th row. I also have collected Raggedy Ann items (dolls, ornaments, knickknacks, etc) since I received a doll on my first Christmas.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I am excited to collaborate with educators beyond the scope of my district as a part of the GTA program because this will translate into exciting learning opportunities in and outside of my school and district. I look forward to meeting forward thinking individuals and making connections as a part of our GTA community and to working as a member of this learning community.
This coming school year will be my 10th year as an educator. I am currently a District Technology Specialist for the Citrus County School District in Citrus County, FL. I love, love, love my job. In my role, I get to travel from school to school helping teachers and students integrate technology into their classrooms. I am the founder and organizer of EdCamp Citrus. I’m proud that EdCamp Citrus was the 5th EdCamp to ever take place back in 2010. This year’s edition will be the 5th annual. I am a member of the #edchat team. I’ve been archiving the #edchat discussions for 5 years now. All of those archives can be found at http://edchat.pbworks.com. I recently became a Google Apps Certified Administrator and am thrilled to become a Google Certified Teacher. I’ve been married to my wife, Kari, for almost 16 years and two amazing, sometimes pain in the rear end, kids, Madison, 12 and Kalen, 9. I’ve also realized that I need a new headshot. 🙂
Interesting Fact:
I LOVE baking. I can bake anything, cookies, breads, cakes, cupcakes. I’ve made birthday cakes and loaves of bread for many of my friends. I’m not great at decorating (yet) but my baked goods taste fantastic. 🙂
What I hope to gain at GTA:
For me, events like GTA, education conferences like ISTE, FETC are all about the connections. I will occasionally learn something new but the best part of these events is meeting amazing people, people who will challenge me and my thinking to help make me better at what I do. It’s always great to meet people, whom I’ve been connected with online for so many years, face to face. for the first time.
I am starting a new position with the University of Wisconsin – Platteville in their school of education. I’ll be teaching a course in educational media applications and language/social studies methods class. Sounds awesome, right? Before this change, I taught Communications courses for Southwest Tech. In the past, I taught English Language Arts 8-12th grade for 11 years, and I enjoyed a short stint as a District Technology Coordinator. I’m also a certified Verbal Defense and Influence instructor. My areas of preferred studies would be Communication and Educational Technology.
Interesting fact:
I have two horses that I adore!
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I want to learn the finer points of Google Apps, the Chrome browser, and Chromebooks. I use Google “stuff” every day but things change every six months, it seems. I find it hard to know all of this little specifics. I’m looking to collaborate will others. After a break from serious edtech networking, I’m looking forward to connecting on a daily basis.
I am Digital Literacy Resource Teacher in the York Region District School Board (YRDSB) just north of Toronto, Ontario. I have the best job in world! I am part of a team of 8 VERY enthusiastic edtech innovators that support our 10, 000 teachers and 125, 000 students on their journey integrating technology into their work and learning. I’ve been a teacher for 20 years and I’ve never been so excited about the possibilities! Along with +Scott Monahan, I having been helping to spread “the Google” throughout our Board for the last couple of years including two “Google Camps” that brought out close to 1000 teachers on Saturdays to learn together. I got to work some of my “social media mentors” Eric Sheninger, Eric Byrne and the EdTech Team as keynotes and presenters. My career has been diverse including years a drug counsellor in a school, a phys. ed. teacher, site administrator, AP Biology teacher and Department Head of Science. How did a biologist end up here…..? I never want to stop learning. I look for opportunities to learn anywhere I can. Chances are, I learned something from you online!
Interesting fact:
Believe it or not, that picture of me is the first “real” picture of me I’ve posted on social media. I’ve always been seen as “Beaker” in all my networks until recently! (See the resemblance?)
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I never want to be the smartest person in the room! I think that’s been the key to my success! I never want to stop learning and am looking so forward to learning from everyone at #gtaalt and the network beyond that exists beyond our two day adventure! To be in a group with so many like-minded and innovative educators, I have to come out a better person on the other side! I try to live by one of my favourite quotes…. “It’s okay to be where you are, it’s just not okay to stay there!”
I was born and raised in Southern California, but I have spent some time in Michigan (for undergrad) and India (with family). I spend most of my time with family and working (mainly because my work does not feel like work). The best way to describe my family . . . Well, just watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding. That pretty much sums us up in a nutshell, minus all of the meat. My family and I are vegetarian for religious reasons—we’re Jain.
I work as a math teacher, Title I Lead, and Technology Coach for the Perris Union High School District. My colleagues are inspirational people, and we serve amazing kids and their families.
My hobbies, besides hanging out with family and working, include needlepoint, beading, and other crafts. I love Bollywood dancing and am a huge I Love Lucy fan.
Interesting fact:
I dropped out of college as an undergrad. After a few month, my dad forced me to go back and sat with me in class. Today, I have my doctorate from USC. Fight On!
What I hope to gain at GTA:
Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate! I want to expand my PLN. I would love to learn how to better use social media. I feel overwhelmed right now and want to learn how others streamline their resources. A sneak peak at Google Classroom would be AWESOME. I look forward to spending two days (of many more to come) with out-of-the-box thinkers.
Laurie Clement
I was hosting a Mini WE Day when I found out I was accepted to the GTA-ATL. It seemed fitting as WE Day is an opportunity to inspire and empower youth to Be The Change! This is me with my 3 children who also worked the event. I am so excited about the opportunity to be inspired by all of you and empowered to continue working toward being the change in my classroom, school and community.
I am a currently teaching in a Grade 8 1:1 Chromebook classroom. Technology has transformed the way I teach and has allowed me to bring my students to levels that I never thought possible. My goal is not to “use” technology but to seamlessly embed it into the learning process. I am also very passionate about providing my students with opportunities to connect globally which led to the development of Global Students Global Perspectives.
Interesting fact:
I am currently working with my class to raise $10,000 to build a school in Kenya. If we achieve this goal, I am definitely planning on going there myself to help build it.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
It is evident already that this group is very passionate about learning and the endless possibilities that technology can provide our students. I am really excited about the opportunity to be part of this learning community and to learn along with each of you! I have a lot of staff members very excited to share in all of this knowledge as well!
I am a first-year high school librarian at Northern Burlington County Regional School Distict in Columbus, NJ. Prior to that, I taught English at the middle school in the same district. In the library this year, I have integrated technology that was not previously being used. For example, I requested and received a cart of Chromebooks that are used daily, and have purchased many new databases and other electronic resources for the students. I have pretty eclectic interests (Star Wars, quilting, Billy Joel, and heavy metal…).
Interesting fact:
I am a huge fan of stand-up comedy. My husband and I have probably seen more stand-up shows than music concerts. Some favorites: Steven Wright, Jim Gaffigan, Jim Breuer, Anjelah Johnson
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I look forward to meeting other tech types and am excited to learn a variety of new tech tools. It will be great to expand my PLN and support system. I can’t wait to bring new things back to the “hungry” teachers back at school who love Google and want more!
I am a high school, language arts educator at Archer High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Through 8 years of experience, I have become passionate about transforming education to meet the complex needs of our 21st Century students. I encourage building a high performance culture and risk-taking within a project-based learning classroom atmosphere. In order to fine-tune my knowledge and craft, I am pursuing an Education Specialist degree in Instructional Technology and School Library Media at The University of Georgia. I love facilitating at workshops in order to help educators learn how to provide authentic learning experiences and digital literacy instruction. I enjoy being a trailblazer and jumping head first into new ways of doing things.
When I am not focused on all things education, I explore the outdoors and play with my two dogs, Roscoe and Beamer. My husband and I love creating and working on projects together. Our most recent one involved landscaping around our Koi pond. I really enjoy a great cup of coffee, reading, Mexican cuisine, baking, singing in the car, watching National Geographic, and spending time with friends and family.
Interesting fact:
I am a rudderless ship. I get lost and turned around very easily. Although it poses a problem while driving, it has led to some amazing discoveries along the way in my daily life and career.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I am really looking forward to meeting my fellow cohort members and learning about all the amazing things each of you do. I hope to bring back ways to enhance student learning in my classroom. My ultimate goal is to walk away with the confidence and knowledge to impact and develop educators locally and globally. I hope to grow, learn, and increase my Googliness through this experience while connecting with a phenomenal group of like-minded individuals.
I am a teacher on an urgent quest. Currently learning with my Grade 3&4 class, using 1:1 iPads. Interested in the social aspects of the internet. Wannabe maker. I am doing all that I can to join the flows to help transform education right now.
Let’s do this.
Interesting fact:
I recently took up the Ukulele and crochet. Why not? It’s always a wonderful experience to be a beginner and experience the arch and adventure of learning.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I hope to build relationships with other educators with a heart and mind for helping students learn and plan some potential projects. I also wish to foster a closer connection and understanding of Google and the Googly vision for helping learners.
I am part of the Instructional Technology Integration Team for the Fond du Lac School District in Wisconsin. Previously, I was a middle school science teacher for 20 years in our district. I am always looking for new ways for students to communicate, create, collaborate and think critically using technology. In the fall of 2012 our district rolled out one the largest high school 1 to 1 initiatives with 2200 Chromebooks. I received my Masters Degree in Educational Technology, I am a Google Education Trainer and a Haiku Learning Certified Trainer. I have presented at several conferences including: ISTE 2013 Google Booth, Midwest Google Summits, and Google/Intel Mini-Summit.
Interesting fact:
I have been to the Googleplex and rode a Google bike across the campus!
What I hope to gain at GTA:
Growth! I embrace lifelong learning and being inspired by new ideas. I am always looking for innovative teaching methods to use in the classroom. I want to bring new ideas back to my staff so I can share that energy and enthusiasm. Becoming a GCT will give me the opportunity to be inspired by other educators at the academy. I look forward to making new acquaintances, friendships and further develop my professional learning network.
I teach Geo/Tech (9th) and Sociology (12th) at West Hills HS in San Diego. When I am not in education mode, I love to spend time traveling, camping and being outdoors with my family. iPhoneography has been a hobby of mine for about a year, so if you are up for a photowalk let me know.
Interesting fact:
I was a hog farmer in “The South” for six months. A few weeks after graduating from San Diego State, I decided I needed to mature and get out of my comfort zone. I boarded a Greyhound bus and road 72 hours, across the US to Turbeville, South Carolina to work on my Dad’s hog farm. After saving a little money, I went to by myself to Costa Rica for three months. After the Costa Rica trip, I returned to San Diego to start my teaching credential. I have only made a few appearances as a farmer since 🙂
What I hope to gain at GTA:
Friendships and what will be shared, created, generated by an incredibly motivated group of educators.
I am the Technology Liaison at John Hanson French Immersion School in Prince Georges County, MD. In addition to this, I also teach Technology Integration and English Language Arts at the middle school level. I have served on the School Leadership Team, advising administrators and teachers on technology-related matters. My main focus for this year has been on flipping the English class, and gamifying the technology class.
Outside of my work at John Hanson, I also conduct professional development for teacher recertification hours at the county level, on topics such as Google Drive, Google Sites, and Using PowerPoint in the Teaching and Learning Process. I have presented on various technology topics at the local, regional, and state level.
I am a doctoral candidate at George Mason University, with a major in Education. My upcoming dissertation, Using Technology to Facilitate Language Acquisition of English Language Learners, is rooted heavily in PBL.
Much of the learning that I do, however, is not from a textbook. It comes from inquiry and collaboration. I hope to reinforce these traits in my students, so that they can become life-long learners. My hope is that they are also able to transform passion into livelihood!
Interesting fact:
I also go by the name of DJ Sarah aka “The Ph.DJ.”
What I hope to gain at GTA: I hope to connect with other passionate educators from around the globe, and learn everything that Google has to offer in terms of education! I’m really interested to learn more about Google Glass, scripts, and Google Classroom.
I’m a digital literacy resource teacher in the York Region District School Board and pursuing an M. Ed. at Nipissing University. I’m passionate about changing elements of the educational culture by working with teachers to show them how technology can make their lives easier and provide more engaging learning for them and their students, and convincing them that they need to share the great things that are happening in their classrooms to support other teachers around them. I am also the facilities engineer, zamboni driver, and concession stand operator at my backyard rink (build, flood, shovel and provide hot chocolate).
Interesting fact:
The first time I got to see a polar bear [IN THE WILD] was when one of my grade 9 students in Arviat, NU, came up behind me on an ATV while I was walking and asked if I wanted to go see a polar bear. Of course I said “Yes!” Little did I know I would only be riding about 500 feet up the road! The polar bear was dozing on the ice beside the road I was walking on. Yikes! I did manage to see a few more in my time in Arviat, but it turned tent camping into a whole new adventure!
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I’m looking to connect with other leaders to find more ways to engage teachers in an inspiring educational future where teachers see themselves as co-learners with their students and are less afraid to venture into new modes of learning and collaborating.
I was born and raised in a small, and I live in a small town. Oops- quoting John Cougar Mellencamp, but it’s true! I have been teaching for about 17 years and loved every second of it. Currently, I teach STEM at a small K-8, rural school with only about 110 students. It is my little Utopia! I LOVE it! I get to be creative and create my own curriculum. I also work for our local Regional Office of Education where I provide PD services to area educators for all thing tech and curriculum related. I get to meet many great educators. I’m living the dream!
Interesting fact:
In 2009, I won the Illinois Computing Educator’s Technology Administrator of the Year, and got fired the next week from my district. I will tell you all that story! LOL
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I want to gain as much as possible to be able to fully implement google tools in my building and geographic locale. I want to be able to show teachers and students how to work more effectively and efficiently (smarter) rather than working harder. I also can’t wait to work with a group of like-minded individuals and develop a stronger PLN!
I was born and raised in a small farming community in Iowa(actually, all of Iowa is a small farming community). After college I moved to Kentucky, married a cute southern girl and live happily with our two crazy children. I am obsessed with technology and love some #deepgeekspeak. I am a PhD. candidate in the University of Kentucky’s School Technology Leadership program with an amazing #ukstl cohort that I am proud to call friends. I teach Media Arts at a one-of-a-kind school that strives to teach in a collaborative manner to foster creativity. I also co-lead #kyedchat on occassion.
Interesting fact:
I used to be a field corn inspector in Iowa. I know more about corn than most people should ever know. I also get bored easy and seek change often. I earned a Journalism degree in college, but went into ministry and eventually fell into teaching.
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I look forward to connecting with people who geek out about technology as much as I do. I want to learn more about how technology can be used to enhance student engagement and further learning. I also look forward to skills I can bring to other educators.
I have been a middle school teacher for 17 years (5 years in Newark, NJ and the last 12 in Middletown Twp.) I currently teach 7th grade Social Studies, but have taken on the informal role of tech coach in my building during my duty and prep periods (as well as before and after school.) I earned my undergraduate degree at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. My degree is in Radio, TV & Film and my dream is to one day write a screenplay that sells! I have a 9-year-old and 12-year-old at home who have also become Google obsessed (I am still working on the hubby!) I will hopefully be in a more formal tech coach role next year and will be helping to roll out the 1-1 Chromebook initiative in my large district. I would also like to implement “20% time” next year with my students!
Interesting fact:
This is not that interesting, but I have a chronic disease called Eosinophilic Esophagitis, which limits the foods I can eat (no dairy, no peanuts, and limited wheat for me), so I am going to be that annoying person that has to ask what the ingredients are in everything we eat in Atlanta! On a lighter note, I am obsessed with the Beatles and my favorite show of all time is Buffy the Vampire Slayer!
What I hope to gain at GTA:
I hope to build my PLN and continue to learn ways to implement GAFE into all content areas, so I can assist teachers in my district. I would also love to learn more about Google Classroom and Chromebook implementation, as I was already asked to do PD on this in the fall! I look forward to being inspired by all of you, who already seem so wonderful!
Third grade has been revisiting their environmental science standards at the end of this year.
S3L2. Students will recognize the effects of pollution and humans on the environment.
a. Explain the effects of pollution (such as littering) to the habitats of plants and
animals.
b. Identify ways to protect the environment.
• Conservation of resources
• Recycling of material
In the library, I pulled tons of environmental print books and made a pathfinder of ebooks, database resources, and websites around the environment.
We’ve also had guest speakers from The Seed and Plate What is The Seed and Plate?
We are an independent magazine in Athens, Ga. with a focus on food, farming and community in the Southeast. We hope to educate and inspire using our surroundings and the amazing people we’ve met along the way. We begin now as an online media publication, with an eye towards a print version in the future. Enjoy.
The Seed and Plate has been fantastic because they have presented to the students several times on composting, community farming, and being friendly to our earth. They have also supported students as they work on environmental projects and plan to give our students an outlet for publishing their work.
We’ve also hosted the Athens Clarke County Recycling Department to talk to the students about composting. Students have been using compost bins and paying attention to the amount of food that is being thrown away in our cafeteria. Since students are watching this closely, they are really starting to think about what we can do as a school to be friendly to our Earth.
After our exploration of print and digital resources as well as our guest speakers, I sent all of the resources into classrooms for students to continue using. Students chose a focus area to learn more about. Then, they came back to the library to learn about 3 options for final projects during the last week of school.
Option 1: Students could write a script with or without props and record it on our environmental Flipgrid.
Option 2: Students could use the Story Me app on the iPad to create a comic strip about their chosen topic.
Option 3: Students could create a blackout poem using text from a web resource or a copied page from an environmental book.
As I shared each option with students, I let them know what they would need to prepare in order to create their final product in one work session. For Flipgrid, students would need their scripts and prop. For Story Me, students would need drawings that they wanted to include in their comic and possible text that would go into speech bubbles written on post it notes. For blackout poetry, students needed to print the page from the web or have teachers copy a page from a book to use. Students spent 2 days in class preparing their materials.
Today, students came to the library with their materials ready. I gave one more quick overview of the projects and we designated areas for record, areas for coloring for blackout poetry, and areas for spreading out to take photographs for Story Me. The classroom teacher, Natalie Hicks (spectrum teacher), folks from The Seed and Plate, and I all walked around and helped students think through the process of creating their product.
Eventually, I stopped roaming around so that I could focus on collecting work from students. Each Story Me comic was saved to the camera roll on the iPad and then downloaded to a folder on my computer. Each blackout poem was photographed and downloaded to a separate folder. Flipgrids were automatically added to the online grid as students submitted.
The students were truly prepared when they came to the library today. This allowed them to really focus on putting together their final product rather than focus on trying to create all of the content. Students supported one another and adults were able to focus on students who needed extra support.
Now our work is ready to show to the world. We’re sharing it all with our new friends at The Seed and Plate to highlight on their website but we also have a gallery to share with you here.
Since January, Mrs. Ramseyer’s 2nd graders have been working in the library and in their classroom on Geniuscon projects. They have explored the question: “If I could change one thing about my school, what would it be?”
Now we’ve arrived at the end of the year with only 4 days of school left. Students are still finishing up their presentations and thinking about their questions. Mrs. Ramseyer and I are working to schedule meetings with students and adults in the school who can create change based on their topics. For example, one student wants more enrichment clusters at our school so he will meet with Ms. Maher, the enrichment cluster coordinator. One student wants devices to go home and another wants more use of the 3D printer, so they will meet with me in the library.
We also wanted students to have a chance to share their genius ideas and projects with a larger audience. Sherry Gick and Matthew Winner have established an Edmodo group for Geniuscon. This is from Sherry & Matthew’s blog post:
Join the Edmodo group by logging into www.edmodo.com, clicking on “+” symbol next to GROUPS, selecting JOIN, and typing in the code ru9b7d. This will make you a member of our Edmodo GeniusCon group, which is a private community. The advantage of keeping this community private is that we can also keep the work and identities of our participating students private. However, we have the option of also sharing posts publically, allowing the whole world to see what your students have created. These public posts are viewable through our GeniusCon homepage under the PROJECTS tab.
I posted some possibilities for when our 2nd graders would be able to connect. Then, I looked at the members of the Edmodo group and sent some messages on Twitter. Shawna Ford in Weatherford Texas had a group of students ready to listen to our 2nd graders. We started planning a connection and Sherry and Matthew jumped on board with their students too.
We decided to hold a Google Hangout On Air so that others could watch our students share their genius live, but we could also archive the event for people who couldn’t attend. My 2nd graders and Sherry’s 8th graders had topics and projects to share.
Our format looked something like this:
Introductions from Georgia, Texas, Indiana, and Maryland
Matthew Winner set the stage for what Geniuscon is all about since 2 of the classes in the hangout had not participated in the project yet.
I gave an introduction to what my students, and then one of my second graders kicked off the event. Each of my students shared their topic, what their solutions were, and how they felt about what they found out.
My students alternated with Sherry’s students sharing.
Then, we closed by letting each school give some closing thoughts.
First, I was amazed by how professional all of the students were in their presentations whether they were in 2nd grade or 8th grade. I was inspired by the variety of topics and how some of the 2nd graders had some of the same topics as the 8th graders. It made me wonder about next time and the potential for collaborating between schools on the same topic. I also loved the different approaches that students took to completing their projects. Sherry’s students worked in groups while Matthew’s students were tackling one big topic together: bullying.
It was also fun to know that our students’ voices were being heard by a global audience. Our librarian friend, Randie Groden, in MA watching live.
We also had some encouragement from our friends at Capstone Press.
Uniting our voices in 4 different states was powerful. Thinking about the power of students stepping up and sharing their genius in multiple states made me proud to be an educator.
My students closed our time with some reflection on our project. We talked about what we loved about the project. I loved that one student brought up the idea that even if our projects didn’t turn out the way we wanted them to, we had the chance to learn about so many kinds of technology like Google forms and Google presentation and working together. There were many meaningful pieces of this project, and I’m grateful to Sherry Gick and Matthew Winner for encouraging us all to help our students share their genius.
Our community amazes me. Every year, new people within our school community step forward with ideas for our library program. People share their talents, their connections, and their love of education.
This year, Rachel Gabara, a parent of a 1st grader, introduced me to a new book called Crabtree by brothers Jon and Tucker Nichols. I’ll admit that it was my first time hearing of the book, but when I looked at the praise for Crabtree on the McSweeney’s website, I was floored. Authors like Jon Klassen, Maira Kalman, Lemony Snickett, and Jon Agee all raved about the book. I immediately ordered it from Avid Bookshop. When I got it, I was raving about the book as much as the reviews. It is jam packed with illustrations of all kinds of things.
Here’s the official trailer:
Crabtree loves to collect things. The problem is that he has so much stuff he can’t find anything. He begins to organize his collections of stuff in order to find his false teeth. Each object on the page is labeled with its name, so kids are introduced to all kinds of tools and gadgets that they’ve probably never heard of. It’s a great books just for the sorting, vocabulary, and potential research opportunities. However, the humor and gadgets of the book are what really make it so much fun to read over and over again. Even the dust jacket of the book has a collection of gadgets and unfolds into a poster. At the end of the book, there’s a game where you can go back through the book finding various objects. You need to order a copy of this book today. It’s so much fun.
When Rachel introduced me to the book, she told me that she was friends with the co-creator, Jon Nichols. She offered to reach out to him to see if he would Skype with us. He agreed, so we got to work preparing for our visit. All of the 1st grade classes read the book in advance and pulled in some categorizing and math standards along the way. Students also spent some time writing out questions for Jon.
Today, the whole 1st grade came to the library and we connected with Jon in California. He was a fantastic Skype author full of energy. He told the kids a bit about how he and his brother made the book together. Both of them were involved in the writing and illustrating process, and it was their first book.
Then, Jon showed the kids how he draws Crabtree.
The students loved it when Jon let them ask him some questions. When authors do this, the teachers help me a lot. They start choosing students from the audience to start forming a line to the side of the screen and camera.
As they get in line, we try to check to make sure the questions are all different and are actually questions. I move the camera down to student-level. Then, students take turns speaking to the author directly into the camera.
Today, students asked Jon questions like:
What kind of paint did you use? He showed us the pens used to draw the illustrations and we learned that the colors were created by computer at the publisher because they didn’t like how real paint looked on the paper.
Why did you call him Crabtree? We learned that it was a mixture of a favorite place to visit but also the idea of 2 things that don’t really go together: crabs and trees.
Can 1st graders write books? Jon was so enthusiastic in his answer and told them that they could absolutely write books. He ran through the whole writing process and got them excited about their ideas for stories.
There were many more wonderful questions. I was really surprised by how well 1st graders asked questions. The teachers did a wonderful job giving students time to think and write their questions down before they came.
We are so thankful to Jon for taking time out of his busy day to connect with us. If you haven’t read Crabtree yet, we highly recommend it.
Kindergarten is revisiting narrative writing at the close of the year. This year, they have also worked very hard on the standard
ELACCKW6 Production and distribution of writing: With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
With this standard as our guide, we have explored tools such as Storybird, Padlet, and Flipgrid to publish our writing. We’ve also used digital tools such as Pebble Go and the Capstone Interactive Library to gather information for our writing.
The Kindergarten teachers wanted to try one more digital tool, so I met with them to brainstorm. We tossed around a lot of ideas, but we ended up deciding to try a brand new tool called Chromville. Chromville is an augmented reality app that was just released this year. It offers 6 different coloring pages. Five of the coloring pages have a setting and a character and the sixth coloring page is a “create your own” character with no setting. First you color your page. Then, you use the Chromville app to select the matching setting and scan the page. Once the screen turns green and you wait 3 seconds, the character and setting come to life on the iPad and the character begins to move around and interact with the setting.
From my own experience with Kindergarten students, I’ve seen how visual they are, and I thought that seeing their character and setting in an interactive way might give them enough ideas to begin imagining their own stories. The teachers and I mapped out what we would do in the library and in class. It looked something like this:
In class, choose a setting and color it.
In the library, use the iPads and the Chromville app to see the setting come to life and brainstorm what to write about.
In class, begin the writing process by describing the character and setting as well as thinking about 3 events and a reaction that might happen in the story.
In the library, use the iPads to look at the Chromville character and setting again for more brainstorming and continue the writing process, including revision and publishing.
In class and in the library, share the final stories.
In the library, do a gallery walk of the all the stories by scanning the Chromville setting and reading the accompanying story
Four of the Kindergarten classes went through this process and it was very exciting to watch. I saw some of the longest stories by Kindergarten students that I have ever seen. Chromville was an exciting and motivating tool for them to use and they were full of energy when using it.
We did learn a lot about what to do differently next time. For example, we will probably opt to use crayons or color pencils next time rather than markers. We will also avoid black as a color since the lines of the coloring page are black. These black lines are the instructions for the iPad to read in order to generated the augmented reality scene. Students also need to be careful not to cross over too many of the lines or color so dark that the black lines can no longer be seen.
Along the way, we shared our success (and our failures) with Chromville, and they were eager to learn with us. We sent them images of pictures that didn’t scan for us and they started taking a look at them to better improve the app.
Today, Mrs. Boyle’s class Skyped with them all the way in Spain. It was so much fun to Skype with someone in another country, but it was even cooler to see the improvements that they are working hard to create for the next update of Chromville. We even got to see some upcoming Chromville projects as well as other augmented reality projects that the team is working on. We loved seeing how even a t-shirt could be a part of an augmented reality project. During the Skype, we also heard them talk about the improvements that they are making to the app. This was such a great connection to the writing revision that students had just gone through. It also validated all of the feedback that students have given about the app over the past few weeks. They heard from the developers that their feedback was making a difference.
We selected one student from each of the Chromville settings to share their stories with the Chromville team. Each student showed his/her coloring page first and then read the story.
Chromville currently has a narrative writing contest going on using the Greenland setting but Kindergarten is not eligible to enter. This was a way to still honor their work and let the good people at Chromville hear how fantastic a Kindergarten story can be too.
This is definitely a project we will try again. I’m thankful for Kindergarten teachers who took a risk with me to try something totally new. As usual, things didn’t work perfectly along the way, but that’s usually where some of the best learning happens. Even though there were some tears, it was a great lesson that things aren’t always perfect and we have to push through failure and learn from it in order to be innovative.
Mrs. Hicks’s 3rd grade students have been working on building Scratch programs for several weeks now. Originally, their journey was going to lead them to creating some scratch programs around a math standard or possibly environmental standards, but the project grew into so much more.
These students started out by creating their own Scratch accounts and exploring. I showed them how to use the tutorial built into Scratch as well as the video tutorials from Hour of Code. From there, students got to work. It seemed that every day these students came into class, they had learned something new. Many of them loved using Scratch so much, that they went home and continued their projects on their own. When a student learned something new, they came in and shared it with others. At the close of each lesson, Mrs. Hicks had students write reflections on a Padlet. This wall became a collective list of tips, new learning, and frustrating moments as students shared their thoughts each day. Students often went back to review their standards, used checklists, and reviewed their work with rubrics throughout the creation process.
Today, several students came together to share their work in progress in a Google Hangout with Shannon Miller’s students in Van Meter, Iowa. The students were very nervous about sharing their work, but they had a lot to be proud of. Students’ projects had branched out to projects in every subject area: a multiplication program that solves multiplication problems, a social studies program about the regions of Georgia, a science program about dinosaurs, a math program about data, and more. It was truly amazing to see what these students have created in Scratch knowing that they all started on the same page. None of them were users of Scratch prior to this project.
To prepare for our Google Hangout, we talked about how to present work online. This included reminders about talking through each step that you are doing rather than just clicking on things in silence. Students went into my office to present their work, while the rest of the students sat in front of the projector to watch. During the practice, students gave one another feedback on how they presented.
Today’s live Google Hangout On Air had some glitches at the beginning when we couldn’t get everyone connected in the hangout, but once we got rolling, the process was smooth. A student screenshared their Scratch project, while students at Barrow and Van Meter listened. Barrow students wrote feedback on paper to give to the presenters during tomorrow’s class. Todd Hollett, our tech integration specialist, helped facilitate the hangout at the projector while I facilitated the student presenting in my office. Van Meter’s students gave verbal feedback during and after each presentation.
I think today gave our 3rd graders confidence in presenting their work online. The positive feedback from Van Meter boosted their confidence as well. Here’s a look at how our Hangout went. It’s a long video, but the projects are amazing for our 1st attempt.
I was excited to hear after the hangout that the students in Van Meter have an idea for a project between Barrow students and Van Meter. I can’t wait to hear more!
We’re living in an Ah-Ha moment. Take 250 years of human ingenuity. Add abundant fossil fuels. The result: a population and lifestyle never before seen. The downsides weren’t visible for centuries, but now they are. Suddenly everything needs rethinking–suburbs, cars, fast food, cheap prices. It’s a changed world.
Expect the Miraculous 