Building Learning Communities 2014

Engage in a strategy-building session on how to foster student-owned learning in the classroom (and survive!). Don't expect one-size-fits-all answers - but questions, strategies, possibilities, examples, and maybe a few awkward (reflective) silences...
Join us as we explore ways to:

• Engage and empower students as critical thinkers, questioners, connectors and creators of content
• Build student repertoire of problem-solving strategies
• Promote and develop student capacity for finding the right information, right relationships and right resources, all at the right time
• Challenge learners to mine mistakes, wrong turns and “failures” for the richer learning opportunities 

How can leaders maximize student engagement and academic achievement? How can leaders encourage teachers and students to collaborate with peers and professionals around the world?

The goal of this session is to provide you with maximum capacity for effective leadership in the 21st Century. This session will outline essential skills for leaders and offer practical guidelines and creative solutions for building accountability into the planning process. Articulating vision and managing change will be emphasized, along with the following:

• Alignment of curriculum to standard
• Designing more rigorous, demanding and globally connected assignment
• Building capacity for family and community involvement
• Addressing issues related to equity
• Developing critical thinking skills
• Designing staff development programs
• Defining new roles for students

This presentation will demonstrate a path to creating a High School computer programming elective that focuses on creating Apps for Microsoft's mobile device App store using TouchDevelop on mobile devices. The session will review the organization of the course, the available resources, and the pedagogy behind a very hands-on approach that gets students programming as quickly as possible, while concurrently connecting broader computing principles to projects as they are being completed.

This presentation will demonstrate a path to creating a High School computer programming elective that focuses on creating Apps for Apple's iOS. The session will review the organization of the course, the available resources, and the pedagogy behind a very hands-on approach that gets students programming as quickly as possible, while concurrently connecting broader computing principles to projects as they are being completed.

Milan Kundera famously said, "One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness will have arrived."" Has that age arrived, when everyone is blogging, texting and tweeting, and some have stopped listening? Now, more than ever, as students are encouraged to ""find their voices"" as writers, teaching quality writing strategies is critical. Students need reasons to write, audiences to reach, and teachers to encourage them to take great risks as they negotiate the transition into serving as their own writing authorities.
In this session, two teachers, one from Washington D.C., the other from Zurich, Switzerland, will share their year-long collaboration experience focused on the art of teaching writing using modern tools. Their work is interdisciplinary and often experimental: students are encouraged to ""own their writing"", even self-assessing and critiquing each other. In this interactive session, Twitter, Skype, Instagram, Tumblr and other self-publishing platforms are used to explore the synergy between modern tools and ancient writing traditions. Both teachers encourage their students to foster an appreciation for classical authors and writing strategies by encouraging them to incorporate ancient rhetorical devices into their modern writing platforms.
This session is focused on the art of teaching writing to Middle and Upper School students.

About us: Daryl ""Gus"" Grissom, Ph.D., is a historian who has spent his career learning from ancient Greek authors, specifically Thucydides and Aristotle; Caitlin Krause, M.F.A., is an author, poet, and visual artist who focuses on timeless concepts such as mindfulness and empathy in her exploration of the craft of both interdisciplinary studies and teaching writing. Through this collaboration, their goal is to leverage both tradition and technology to allow students to discover their own authorial voices while still guiding them in ways that transcend the traditional writing process."

Your school or district is going Google, now what? This session is for teachers and administrators covering practical implementation of Google Apps for Education. The session will go beyond use of individual tools and provide a system where students and teachers can use the tools all within an educational framework. Participants will leave with templates, resources and best practices they can use back to their classrooms.

This session will focus on providing a concise vision of how all of the pieces come together to create a succinct global learning environment. Discussion will include the necessity of a virtual platform for instructional delivery, how to keep students informed, as well as how to best maximize resources, create a paperless classroom, allow for collaboration, assess learning, and provide feedback.

It’s not the gadgets, tools and wires that will change the culture of learning. It’s how you create a vision that withstands the rush of new tools, and how you use them for collaboration, communication and critical thinking that will radically change the teaching and learning process. New technology does not change teaching and learning practices, not without a clear vision and innovative practices to engage students in becoming more self directed problem finders. 

How can we make use of these tools to expand learning and foster critical thought? What programmatic trends distinguish schools on the leading edge of using technology for global education? How can a school’s professional development program help teachers embrace these opportunities? What technologies are educators talking about? How can administrators become more aware of tools like Twitter so they can make informed decisions about policy? What are ways administrators can help model implementation of technology? Come to this forum and be prepared to share your experiences and explore your questions to help envision the future of your school, implementation of 1:1 programs and more.

Leave with a unified goal for teaching and learning with technology and ideas for how to evaluate the teaching with technology that occurs within your school in order to assess the impact your investment has.

Do you think the First Five Days of School are absolutely essential to the success of the school year?  Are you confident that all of your students understand how to learn and globally collaborate in the evolving world of digital content?  Do your students understand advanced search? Do they know how to organize the myriad details of what they read on the Internet.  Do they know how to contribute to the learning success of the class with easy-to-use tools such as screen casting?  What if every teacher designed a very powerful 1stFiveDay orientation for students to "learn how to learn"?  Initial pilots have shown that this concept of the 1stFiveDays can create higher levels of academic achievement for the whole year.  The good news is that is an accessible and very doable concept. Go team.  

School leaders often ask themselves,
Are the dollars invested in instructional technology having sufficient impact to justify the cost?
Is professional development focused on the appropriate skills?
Do teachers and administrators share ownership of the technology success?
Is the school ready for a paperless environment?
And what do students think about technology use at school?

This session will take a look at data gathered from more than 50 schools in south Texas using the Clarity online platform from BrightBytes. Survey results from more than 2,000 teachers and administrators, and more than 12,000 students show commonalities, misconceptions, opportunities, and recommendations to ensure sustainability.

For more details on the Clarity pilot, visit www.learn421.net/claritypilot

Face it. Some of your teachers simply have no desire to be on Twitter—even if you explain all the resources that can be found there. I get it! However as an administrator, technology coordinator or curriculum coach, you still have a responsibility to help your staff continue their learning and to keep them informed about the latest news and resources in their fields. In this session, learn how you can take the relevant articles and resources you find on Twitter (and in other places), and easily create customized, digestible, electronic learning magazines for free using Flipboard. These can easily be shared with teachers, parents or other specific groups.

This presentation will demonstrate a path to creating a High School computer programming elective that focuses on creating Apps for Microsoft's mobile device App store using TouchDevelop on mobile devices. The session will review the organization of the course, the available resources, and the pedagogy behind a very hands-on approach that gets students programming as quickly as possible, while concurrently connecting broader computing principles to projects as they are being completed.

Digital citizenship is a critical skill set in today’s technology rich and globally connected society. A growing number of schools allow students to bring their own mobile devices but often fail to acknowledge the digital disconnect between students and teachers.

Technology and digital media allow students to explore, develop their global IQ, collaborate, and learn in ways never before imagined. This can only materialize, however, with the appropriate teaching practices, and when both students and teachers exercise responsible, safe and ethical behavior.

Students misuse technology due to boredom, curiosity and peer pressure. Participants in this session will become familiar with apps students commonly use to consume content, create content, connect with other people, and play. While some apps may have instructional value, educators should be vigilant about many others.

Few schools have the amount of technical support that they need and one of the most overlooked resources schools have is their students! If you have staff who are reluctant with technology, students can be great liaisons to change while empowering the student at the same time. The student learns by teaching and the teacher learns by listening. In this session, we will cover a variety of examples of how this is accomplished.

This session will focus on providing a concise vision of how all of the pieces come together to create a succinct global learning environment. Discussion will include the necessity of a virtual platform for instructional delivery, how to keep students informed, as well as how to best maximize resources, create a paperless classroom, allow for collaboration, assess learning, and provide feedback.

It’s not the gadgets, tools and wires that will change the culture of learning. It’s how you create a vision that withstands the rush of new tools, and how you use them for collaboration, communication and critical thinking that will radically change the teaching and learning process. New technology does not change teaching and learning practices, not without a clear vision and innovative practices to engage students in becoming more self directed problem finders. 

How can we make use of these tools to expand learning and foster critical thought? What programmatic trends distinguish schools on the leading edge of using technology for global education? How can a school’s professional development program help teachers embrace these opportunities? What technologies are educators talking about? How can administrators become more aware of tools like Twitter so they can make informed decisions about policy? What are ways administrators can help model implementation of technology? Come to this forum and be prepared to share your experiences and explore your questions to help envision the future of your school, implementation of 1:1 programs and more.

Leave with a unified goal for teaching and learning with technology and ideas for how to evaluate the teaching with technology that occurs within your school in order to assess the impact your investment has.

This session is designed for the advancement of professional development. iTunes U can bring your professional development courses to the next level. This presentation will walk you step-by-step through creating an online professional development community that will allow you seamlessly integrate district initiatives, reduce copy costs, and improve communication. This easy to follow and upbeat presentation will have you creating a thriving professional development environment in no time.

Learn the advantages of using iTunes U for Professional Development
Learn how to streamline district initiatives
Learn the effectiveness of using iTunes U as a communication tool
Learn how to empower your district

Digital citizenship is a critical skill set in today’s technology rich and globally connected society. A growing number of schools allow students to bring their own mobile devices but often fail to acknowledge the digital disconnect between students and teachers.

Technology and digital media allow students to explore, develop their global IQ, collaborate, and learn in ways never before imagined. This can only materialize, however, with the appropriate teaching practices, and when both students and teachers exercise responsible, safe and ethical behavior.

Students misuse technology due to boredom, curiosity and peer pressure. Participants in this session will become familiar with apps students commonly use to consume content, create content, connect with other people, and play. While some apps may have instructional value, educators should be vigilant about many others.

Your school or district is going Google, now what? This session is for teachers and administrators covering practical implementation of Google Apps for Education. The session will go beyond use of individual tools and provide a system where students and teachers can use the tools all within an educational framework. Participants will leave with templates, resources and best practices they can use back to their classrooms.