This is how I keep growing!

I went to EdCampRivCo today.  I was attending this event with four other colleagues that I have the highest respect for and two of us had discussed that we wanted to learn something the other one already knew about, so we decided we would put those topics up on the board.

How EdCamp works is that participants choose what they would like to learn about and put a post-it for that topic up on a grid. Then the sessions are created by the post-its.  Those in attendance select from the topics that are posted.  This means you want to arrive early so you can get a topic that you are interested in up on the board. My colleagues and I got there EARLY! So, up went our two topics that we had discussed earlier.  Mine was Plickers (after my experience yesterday with students) and hers was Infographics.

The Infographic session was first.  I had played with Piktochart a little bit after my friend/colleague had talked about it last year.  She had even shared some of her student's work so that I could see it.  However, I find that if I don't use it, I lose it (with technology information) because there is SO MUCH to remember.  I too, like my students, have to put knowledge into practice or it quickly leaves my head.  Now, I have been planning a project for my AP Statistics students to do using data analysis, and plan to use 2 days to have them work on it in class.  They will be using Google Forms,  ESPN.com, StatKey and Interactivate to both gather and analyze data of their choosing. I get to "up their game" in creating a worthwhile product (a skill that will be useful to them in their future, I hope), because now they are going to create an infographic using Piktochart templates.  I am so excited to see the results.  I will blog about this in a couple weeks when they have finished.

On to session #2: Plickers.  Since I used them yesterday and got them to work, I figured I might as well "share the wealth".  I printed out a few of them to take so we could use them and it was AWESOME!  I even got to learn a few things about the app that I didn't know (how reports work)! Collectively, the group asked questions and I clicked on buttons to see what they did. Voila! Reports show individual student results, by class period! Super for formative assessment!

Session #3: TouchCast and making your own videos.  I presented (with my colleague's help as she has used it too).  I have made several video lessons for my students (they take notes at home watching my videos) so I thought this would be useful to share with teachers who (a) are interested in flipping their classroom or (b) have to be out and need a video lesson for the substitute to play (helped me last year when I had to miss 2 days for conferences).  I even learned that it will work on a computer w/a mouse, not just the IPad.  Great discussion occurred in that session.

Session #4: Math resources on the internet.  We looked at Desmos (fabulous graphing app), Geogebra (does SO MANY things), Inside Mathematics (has LOTS of common core resources), CTAP Region 10 performance tasks (for common core).  Just checking all this information out myself is going to take a few hours!  This is why I love going to EdCamp!  It's a great pool of teacher resources that helps speed me along in finding useful tools and information!  Not to mention the contagious enthusiasm and fabulous networking.  Well spent morning, that is for sure!