Sebago Education Alliance (SEA) Tech Camp

My teaching and learning are continuing as I present and attend sessions at the SEA Tech Camp for teachers. On Monday I taught two half day sessions: Adding Media to Blogs, Wikis and Sites and What I Learned in School Today - Elementary Blogs. The links are to the plans for the sessions that include online links to help sheets and other resources. As always I learned while teaching and it was great to collaborate with other educators.

Today I am attending Alice's session on Google Certified Trainer session on using Google Apps. One of my goals this summer is to become a certified trainer taking the online series of trainings. There are a lot of people here who are not using using Google Apps for Education and I am struck by how much our district has come to rely on the interoperability and collaboration options of our domain.

Summer-Fall Yarmouth Technology Course 2013

In the week after students finished classes in Yarmouth 32 teachers and 9 student assistants spent three days focusing on using technology to support personalized learning. The course site is posted at https://sites.google.com/a/yarmouthschools.org/summer-2013-tech. Proposed projects include ways to involve students in curation using various tools and sharing work through blogs and specialized Google sites. The summer component of the course requires that teachers spend time online viewing suggested materials and reflecting in blog posts. There will be a work day in September and a final Saturday in October to share projects with everyone enrolled in the class for credit.

EdCafe Take Away

This post was created during the Yarmouth Summer-Fall Technology course during our demonstration lesson of Katrina Kenney's EdCafe model. We introduced the EdCafe model and then presented the choices for three sessions of PBS TED Talks Education videos. My group chose to watch the segment by Geoffrey Canada, of Harlem Children's Zone.
We discussed the video for about a half an hour. One interesting component was that we had two high school students in our group and they added their perspective about their preferences for assignments and personalizing their learning.

The takeaway for our group is as follows:

How are we as teachers failing our students?

• Not all students are engaged at all times
• Compartmentalized learning by subject, not integrated
• Kids fall through the cracks - how do we get students to access support? Keep on trying!!

How do we keep on innovating?

• Students respond to choice in learning materials and project options
• Keep talking about what "personalized learning" means
• Pursue YEF grants for resources