Ramping up for the school year

There's so many ways to embrace CyberSafety and Digital Citizenship with your students. Here's an infographic that highlights the events throughout the year to focus on.

My first ISTE

The last day of school was Friday, June 25. I was on my way to Philadelphia at 6am Saturday morning. So my head was already spinning before I even got there. ISTE is the major educational technology trade show that everyone talks about all year, and this was my first trip there. Microsoft paid for my hotel and travel expenses because I became certified in Microsoft Education, which was very cool. My head continued to spin for the next three days. It was great.
I took a lot away with me from the experience. There are many people doing incredible things with technology, and I want to know it all. I found that this is impossible, but I can get closer to that goal by at least being around them.
I advanced what I know about coding and I learned entirely new things. I want to do more programming with my students so I went to the presentation that a group in New Jersey have developed to teach girls how to code. I'm thinking about adding Minecraft to my curriculum, so I saw an amazing teacher from Hawaii show us the things he's doing with his students with it.
Graphite is a great resource, and they sponsored a bowling party where I hung around with other teachers and we couldn't talk fast enough about all the things we do in our classrooms.
The three days flew by and I was exhausted but thrilled. I was inspired by what I saw, and overwhelmed by it all. I can't wait to go again next year.

Hour of Code

I received some mail about the Hour of Code last year around this time. I had no idea what it was and I was barely interested in it, but I looked through it because I'm always looking for new things to add to my technology curriculum. I went to the website and watched the intro videos and started working through the activities. It took a few minutes, but I was hooked and I knew my students would be too. The Hour of Code introduces students to a skill they might not know they have; the extended linear thinking necessary to work through a problem.

I worked through the first hour and set up classes to use in my classroom immediately. I didn't know much about coding yet, but I knew more than them, and that's all I needed.

What was amazing when my students started working on it was the variety of students who took to it. I knew the bright kids would do fine, but even some of the students that, shall we say, "struggle" were able to grasp the concepts and really excel at this task. Since they so rarely get to be good at something in school, they embraced it all the more. It made me so happy to see them excel. A student that is often suspended was one of my assistants who I would ask to help others when they ran into trouble. I didn't have much to do with it, but I know that particular student felt really good in my classroom.

The big push with Hour of Code is coming up again next month, during Computer Science Education Week, which this year is December 8-14. They have expanded the website to include lots of activities that go deeper than the Hour of Code. They even have differentiated it for younger kids, with limited amount of reading necessary to include the tasks.

It's a year later, and I have now included a lot of programming lessons in my curriculum, and I think the kids love it. They see how this will be a skill they could actually use. I learned a lot, but I have so much more to learn. I presented my lessons at a few conferences, and the feedback has been very positive. I recommend any and every one to try it. It sounds scary, but trust me, it's actually fun. Being a geek can be cool.

TechForum New York 2014

I had a wonderful time yesterday at the Tech Forum. I presented my work "Introducing Coding to Middle School Students" which many people I spoke to seemed very interested and really enjoyed my presentation, and that was awesome. What was really great was the rest of the day. The speakers were inspiring, the topics covered were relevant, and everyone was so friendly and generous with their skills and knowledge. It was comforting to be among my people-the geeks. You could use words like "social media" without anyone's eyes glazing over.

I think I know a lot of stuff about technology, but then I go to events like this and feel like an idiot. The more you learn about technology, the more you realize how much you don't know. I have a lot to explore and discover on my own is what I took away from the forum yesterday. It's overwhelming, but also fun in a way. Technology can be tough and frustrating, but it is never, ever boring. Thanks for a great day everyone.