Presenter: Karen Bosch Location: Southfield, Michigan USA @karlyb
Presentation Title: Let’s Draw Some Attention: Digital Sketchnotes for Learning
Presentation Description: Interested in exploring how Digital Sketchnotes can impact learning for both you and your students? This session will introduce what you need to get started with taking visual notes, including an overview of the process, equipment and apps, hints and techniques, and a wealth of resources. Lesson ideas and examples from students will be featured as part of the session.
Presenter: Scott McLeod Location: Ames, Iowa, USA @mcleod
Presentation Description: Whenever any sort of change or innovation is discussed, the ‘Yes, but…’ objections are inevitable. However, instead of allowing those resistance points to dominate and defeat promising ideas, teachers and administrators can reframe opposition into possibility by asking the questions ‘Why not?’ and ‘How can we?’ Effective educators focus on adaptation, forward progress, and collective effort and efficacy. The ‘yes, buts’ dont do anything except keep us stuck. Too often we get mired in negativity and defeatism instead of recognizing that – both individually and collectively – we usually have the ability to do and be so much more than our current reality reflects. This keynote focuses on transformative leadership mindsets and features exemplary schools from around the world that are ignoring the ‘yes, buts’ to make amazing things happen for children and youth.
Presenter: Adam Jones Location: Andover, NH, USA @adamjonesed
Presentation Title: Adam Jones Education Podcast Creation Story
Presentation Description: In this 17 minute video, I tell the story behind the creation of the Adam Jones Education Podcast. This presentation falls under the “Stories of Connection” theme because I am eager to share how the Podcast has catalyzed my own learning and encouraged others in my PLN to share their stories. At the heart of the story are the three critical ingredients for learning: time for obsession, connection with experts and time to build a prototype to learn from failure. Additionally, producing a regularly occurring Podcast raises questions about how to best promote it with an audience because it really is all about sharing other people’s work beyond our PLN. I continue to learn a ton about leveraging social media for sharing.
Presenter: Bart Miller Location: Tokyo, Japan @barmill
Presentation Title: Trust and Transparency
Presentation Description: Support self directed, interest and passion driven learning in your classroom by building trust. Using simple tools and strategies to maximize transparency, we can empower students to explore their passions to engage in deeper learning and authentic inquiry.
Presenter: Jared Colley and Joel Garza Location: Arlington, TX and Addison, TX @jcolley8
Presentation Description: This presentation demonstrates how a good idea was born out of a collaboration involving three teachers who first set out to do something very traditional with their English classes. Growing from a shared interest to try something different, teachers experimented to understand the organic but deliberate aspects of one instance of collaboration, made possible by technology and open-minded spirits. In the beginning, however, the idea was largely traditional: to host a collaborative, inter-institutional paper conference for high school students. This is the story of how a traditional vision became the catalyst for 21st century learning practices – attempting, from there, to outline the emotional anatomy of such collaborative experiences.
New media presents promising opportunities for students and teachers together to think beyond traditional methods for collaboration, and our experience is a story about learning involving three classes that simultaneously engaged two literary texts in such a way. Collaboratively, students read more critically, thought more divergently, and synthesized their ideas creatively; they engaged in unexpected conversations, demonstrated knowledge through multiple media, and inspired creative thinking in their peers and us, demonstrating the relationship between teaching practices and student habits of mind. Digital/nontraditional collaboration empowered students to formulate questions for new audiences, to understand through practice the relationship between purpose, audience, and word – doing so by blogging articles, preparing videos, and recording audio mp3s. The story concludes with the final composition of traditional conference papers, shared inter-institutionally, and we seek to outline the logistics and emotional realities of such an endeavor.
Presenter: Wesley Fryer Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma USA @wfryer
Presentation Title: Igniting Innovation in Teaching and Learning
Presentation Description: What ignites your spark for teaching and learning inside and outside the classroom? What sustains your spark for creativity and innovation? What can be a spark of innovation to encourage teachers who are not early adapter / innovators in our schools? These questions and more are addressed by Wesley Fryer, Rachel Fryer, Brad Wilson, Autumn Laidler, Jess McCulloch, Cheryl Oakes, Amy Burvall, Richard Byrne, Kevin Hodgson, Brian Crosby, Jennie Magiera, Jason Neiffer, Diane Woodard, and Michelle Roundy in this opening keynote presentation for the 2014 K-12 Online Conference. Come travel with us from Oklahoma City to Michigan, Chicago, Australia, Maine, Nevada, Montana, California, New York and Wyoming as we explore the theme of “Igniting Innovation” for this year’s conference. Please take the challenge posed by Wesley in this video: Record and share a short (60 second) video answering one of these questions about “igniting innovation!” Share your video on YouTube with the hashtag #k12onlineIgnite under a Creative Commons license. By sharing with a CC license you will permit and empower others to engage in “combinatorial creativity” and make combined remix videos including your ideas! Also, please make sure your video is PUBLIC on YouTube. Share the link to your video using the following Google Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1j53vNvuSY6T3kqqyO3SyarNu-2UAeJEzQawjAH5DzuQ/viewform?usp=send_form
Presenter: Vinnie Vrotny and Sheryl Peterson Location: Palatine, IL US @vvrotny and @speterson224
Presentation Title: STEAM: Creating A Maker Mindset
Presentation Description: Look around a lower grade or early childhood classroom. You will see a flurry of activity, students building, constructing, and experimenting with materials. This dynamic changes in middle and high school, as these once confident students begin with questions such as, “Why are we doing this?”, “Am I doing this right?”, and “Is this on the test?” which changes to the statement, “I am not good at this.”
A new movement which is emerging, the Maker Movement, which now challenges students to become the learner they once were, willing to try and confident in their ability to learn. It is:
School Projects + Technology = Maker 2.0
During this session, you will learn how one school has transformed its space and created a STEAM curriculum designed to allow students to rediscover their inner kindergartner. The focus of this session will be on the curriculum is being built to allow middle school students to either explore and discover their passions or dive deep into a self-identified areas of passion so that they can become someone who is willing to try, confident in their ability to learn new things, often with the help of others, and a willing to prototype, fail, reflect, and rebuild.
This session will share the environment and classroom tools which will supplement this. You will find out how you can start small, for less than 0 and scale upwards from there.
Presentation Title: Leading by Example: Harnessing the Internet to Promote Professional Growth and Lifelong Learning
Presentation Description: This presentation will explore an educational professional’s ongoing journey as a leader and lifelong learner. It will examine free online resources for promoting personal professional growth including: social media-based communities of practice, Open Courseware, webinars, listservs, and blogs. This session aims to provide educational practitioners with ideas and inspiration for using the Internet as a tool for ongoing professional growth. Participants will see how a small investment of time can enable them to become active members in current communities of professional practice. The presentation will be produced via video though which the presenter will personally articulate her unique personal experiences and insights.
Presenter: Stephen Ransom, Ph.D. Location: Rochester, NY USA @ransomtech
Presentation Title: Making Space to Make
Presentation Description: The idea of making things is nothing new. It’s timeless. However, as culture and technology have shifted, we’ve moved, as Dale Dougherty points out, from making things out of necessity and just “being smart” to being much more consumers of things and of information. The culture of schooling has shifted right along with this as we watch standards and accountability take much more of a front seat, often resulting in kids’ making of interesting things and immersing themselves in interesting projects wane. In this presentation, I share from a father’s perspective how making at home keeps my kids’ interest and passion for learning sharp. The tools of the trade are very much of the traditional kind, yet new tools have opened up new doors and new possibilities for them as they are able to pursue their passions and discover new passions like never before possible. I suggest here that the same learning opportunity can and should happen at school and not be limited to a club or home experience. Our new technologies and new interest-based/passion-based learning spaces make this more possible than ever before.
Presenter: Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA @smartinez @GaryStager
Presentation Title: Building Learning Keynote – Making the Case for Making in Schools
Presentation Description: The Maker Movement is a revolutionary global collaboration of people learning to solve problems with modern tools and technology. Adults and children are combining new technologies and timeless craft traditions to create exciting projects and control their world. The implications are profound for schools and districts concerned with engaging students, maintaining relevance, and preparing children to solve problems unanticipated by the curriculum. The technological game-changers of 3D printing, physical computing and computer science require and fuel transformations in the learning environment. K-12 educators can adapt the powerful technology and “can do” maker ethos to revitalize learner-centered teaching and learning in all subject areas.
