Presenting at LACUE 2013




I am not going to bore you with the stress that I have had over the last three weeks. Just suffice it to say that life can hit you with some very difficult curve balls. What makes it nice is to have a collaborator who watches your back. In September when I decided to present at the annual conference for the Louisiana Association of Computer Using Educators (LACUE), I had no clue that time would get away from me. Kelly Maher and I have presented together before, and we planned to do it again this year. I like working with Kelly because we are very different and each of us are able to make unique contributions to our presentations. So I am writing this and offering a HUGE shout out to Kelly for probably pulling way more weight on this presentation than I did. I really appreciate it because I think that we nailed it. 

This time around we wanted to inspire, share some of what we have done by telling stories and introduce some new web tools. We wanted to emphasize that most of the projects assigned can be accomplished across platforms. Patrick Taylor Academy is a 1:1 laptop school, but many of the programs that we use are also available on phones and tablets and different operating systems. We see the writing on the wall and don't believe that schools will be able to afford to continue purchasing electronics for the students. We think that bring your own device (BYOD) is going to be the next big thing in education and ed tech. If we set up our projects and assignments to make it easier for students to complete on a myriad of devices, then we are providing students both choice and a way to accomplish tasks more efficiently for the individual student. 

Kelly and I are Armed and Ready

We titled our presentation: "Be Armed and Ready for the Next Evolution in Educational Technology." You can find all of our resources on the wiki that we created here: http://nextevolutioninedtech.wikispaces.com/. Check out our links, you will probably find something that you haven't used before. Hopefully, I will have an opportunity soon to look at all the new tools that I encountered during this conference, and when I do, I will share with you on this blog.

As part of our presentation, we showed a short film of two students from Patrick Taylor Academy talking about the importance of technology in their lives. You can view the video below. Please note the problem solving that Paris had to do to overcome the lack of Internet access at home. You


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Holidays from BRiMS and Bookmarked

I run two book groups at Patrick Taylor. My high school book group, Bookmarked , was created in the fall of 2007 which was my second year as librarian at the school. The students really wanted a library club, but the square footage of the library was so small that I could not imagine how any students could do any actual library work. Instead I created a book discussion group. Not only did we meet to talk books, but I tapped these students to help me with fundraisers and special programming like Teen Read Week. Helping me with these special activities seemed to appease the members. I waited until February of 2009 to institute a book discussion group for my middle school students called BRiMS, or Books Rule in Middle School . Both of the groups meet during lunch, and this year, the school added a third lunch. Now BRiMS is made up of only 6th and 7th graders. Bookmarked has 8th-12th grade students. This has actually worked well because in 2014 and 2015, Bookmarked lost a lot of members w
Read more

Banned Book Week: Students Make Comments Pro & Con Censorship

Image
This blog post is being designed as a lesson for the English I students at PFTSTA. The teachers and I have collaborated on an activity to celebrate Banned Book Week (BBW). Many times in the past during BBW, I have invited the 8th graders into the library to discuss the banning and challenging of books in schools and libraries. I usually show some videos and share books owned by our library that have been banned or challenged somewhere in the US. This activity always spurs great discussion among the students and teachers. This year we wanted the students to create a written response to the presentation. We thought there was a real world connection if we had the students post their opinion online as a comment to someone writing about censorship in schools. The teachers and I want the students to learn how to compose a well thought out comment that is supported by evidence and concrete details. How more real world could it be than having the students comment directly on their librar
Read more

Students Weigh in on Banned Books and the Freedom to Read

Image
Every year, for Banned Book Week, I prepare a lesson for our 8th graders. It was always teacher directed with discussion until last year . The English I teachers and I created a lesson for the students that included research and writing. I pulled the materials that I wanted them to read, and the students would write a very short essay declaring their belief in the need for teens to be able to exercise their freedom to read what they want to or the need for certain books to be taken off the shelves of the library or pulled from the English curriculum.  Above is the slide presentation that I have made for the students. Included in the slides are several videos that I thought would get the students thinking. There are slides with links to specific articles that we want the students to read and use for the concrete evidence to support their stance. A rubric is included at the end so the students know exactly what is expected. The teachers and I want the writing to have a rea
Read more