My First Virtual Conference

As a seasoned educator I have attended plenty of conferences, and while I love the immense motivation, inspiration, and abundance of resources I receive, the time away from my classroom can be quite difficult. Very often conferences are not local and require me to leave my students for several days at a time. In my absence, the substitute does the best they can, but very often they have no visual arts experience and learning is on hold until my return.   Due to this interruption in student learning the idea of attending a pre-recorded virtual conference, whenever it was convenient for me was quite appealing.

 For my first virtual conference I attended a presentation by Dr. Leigh E. Zeitz, a STEM unit on Rube Goldburg, he taught to 6th graders.  My interest in this lesson comes from my four year old son, who loves Rube Goldburg machines and has us constantly creating them around the house with him.  Within this presentation Dr. Z (as he's known) presented the lesson in many creative and innovative ways to the students. He started by challenging them to get a marble into a bucket.  Without any prior knowledge of Rube Goldburg students began creating their own machines to help accomplish the seemingly simple task.  He then utilized some Passion-Based Learning techniques and had students explore Rube Goldburg machines.  Student's then identified a simple task to accomplish, created diagrams describing how they would perform the task, and then planned how they would build their machines.  Their was a specific set of criteria they must follow, such as how many machines they must have and how many different types of energy they must use. The three tasks identified were how to pop a balloon, how to make a smoothie, and to dip a chip.  All but one of the machines accomplished it's task without any aid.

My experience attending a virtual conference was quite liberating. I could view the information when it was best for me and still be available for my students.  I saw some inspiring examples of Problem-Based learning and look forward to attending more virtual conferences in the future, perhaps some that are even live!

If you would like to checkout the event that I attended, click the link below.
http://k12onlineconference.org/category/2014/steam-2014/

My PLN, (Personal Learning Network) what have I learned so far....

The creation of my Personal Learning Network is an ongoing process, one that I see continuing to grow and evolve much like that of my teaching.  As my network develops, so do the tools I use to enhance my connections.  This week I pushed myself to use new tools like Feedly and Scoop.It.  It was invigorating to try something new and also overwhelming.  Very often the information we choose to take in through the internet is edited for us, provided in bite sized chunks.  This week through the use of tools like Scoop.It, I was able to tap into new and exciting feeds.  I discovered new information, I would have been unaware of through old resources and shared it with others via TweetDeck.  I'm working toward becoming more connected, sharing and commenting on information and resources in a way that I never would have considered possible weeks prior.  This information though, can be over whelming.  Scoop.It feeds provide so much information, that I can get lost just looking for a new feed to follow, never mind actually reading the information.  I find that my biggest challenge with my new tools is time management.  I need to ensure that I'm using them with purpose and focus.  It is very easy to get lost or become distracted.

I see my Feedly, Scoop.It and especially my Twitter as powerful tools as I grow my PLN.  My blog on the other hand, isn't my most useful tool. I need to discover better ways to utilize my blog, as I develop my PLN.  It has the potential to be useful, but I'm not quite there.  I am excited to see how my new tools can help increase the usefulness of my blog.

#Learning: A lesson in #hastages, Twitter, and what in the world is a PLN?!

Twitter:
@Lbhammond

Twitter, I am WAY too old for this stuff...or so I thought. I created my twitter account on a whim, my students were all tweeting (whatever that was) and asked me to create one too. I figured why not, I can always delete it later. I've had my Twitter account since early 2011, but haven't really used the it since it's creation. My account has been a private account up until this week. I have used it more as a mechanism to communicate with former students or to follow issues of interest. I would sporadically check Twitter, sometimes going months at a time without checking the app. Prior to my involvement in the UVM technology series I would have never considered using Twitter to learn more about educational trends or to build a personal learning network. (I didn't even know what a PLN was). This week I have really pushed beyond my comfort zone, technologically speaking, and I'm loving it! I downloaded TweetDeck, it makes Twitter so much easier to understand and see in "real time." I even participated in my first Twitter Chat. Man, that thing moved fast! I was struggling to read all the information, much less respond to the questions that were proposed. Despite the fast pace, and early hour (7:30am Saturday!) I loved it. I participated in the educational forum #satchat. It was amazing to hear all the ideas from educators around the country as we discussed various reading strategies. I discovered some great information and found some amazing minds to follow. I'm really looking forward to participating in another chat in the future. I would say to anyone who it hesitant, but interested in Twitter Chats, is you need a program like TweetDeck and a willingness to try. It is going to be fast, and overwhelming but it's also a great opportunity to gather a vast amount of information in a relatively short amount of time. 

I love research, so Twitter has become this amazing resource I never knew existed. Prior to this week I had viewed Twitter as more of a superficial mechanism celebrities used for self-promotion. Now I see it is a valuable tool, for research, collaboration, networking.... I am excited to use Twitter to help build my PLN, my personal learning network. I hope to move beyond just following individuals or organizations such as @TEDTalks, to having personal interactions, and conversations with people through Twitter.