CUE 2015 Notes & Reflections

I just got back from three awesome days at the Annual CUE Conference in Palm Springs.

Sessions I attended:

• Applying Best Practices in 1:1 (Cheryl Morris, Andrew Thomasson, Sam Patterson)
• Slide Deck (see for lots of student creation examples)
• Students have a digital portfolio on Weebly
• Autocrat can let students fill out a form and be emailed a document; teacher is still owner (still not sure how this is better/easier than Doctopus; need to explore)
• Pixlr functions like photoshop (14.99/year for desktop version)
• gr1tech.blogspot.com (leads to gr1work.blogspot.com but it's private).  Students send an email and it becomes a blog post on the class blog = awesome!
• Benefits of puppeting:
• No Student Faces
• It's not "them" so they aren't as afraid to make mistakes
• Quotes:
• Tech is an invitation to improve pedagogy
• If you teach them to use it as a scantron device, then they will
• We must model for teachers how to use the tech as a content creation tool
• We want students to be critical creators of content.  That they know something and can do something with it.
• 21st century note-taking (Adrian Lucero & David Allen, GGUSD)
•  Slide Deck (see for lots of student examples)
• Taking Notes is useless without review - must review within 24 hours
• Template Gallery in Google Drive - find this one in the public gallery:
• Digital Focused Note Template
• Use UberConference Add-on to Google Docs for live chatting if GHangouts are blocked
• Tip - fill in powerpoint notes for students already.  They just fill in the columns for questions and their notes.  This allows them to think about what they are talking about and not just rush to copy things down.
• The questions on the left are not populated by the teacher.   Students can write down questions that are posed by the teacher during class, or ones they actually have
• Follow-up / Review activities:
• Add 3 HOT questions
• Summaries
• Review and Revise notes:
• Bullet point / number ideas
• highlight key terms and main ideas
• delete anything that may appear extraneous
• add details you may have missed (can research directly within the Google Doc)
• identify areas of confusion and define new terms
• Exchange main ideas via comment feature on google doc
• Add images, symbols, articles, etc through research tab - also adds citation at bottom of screen!
• Add hyperlinks to external sources (articles, videos, etc) within notes
• Notes, Questions, and maybe Summaries are Day 1.  Steps 4-7 are not in order necessarily
• 7 steps:
  1. Create template
  2. Pre-populate notes from ppt
  3. Students take notes
  4. Students do questions and summaries
  5. Review, organize, highlight
  6. Collaborate with a partner
  7. Synthesize new ideas from the outside
• WSQing your Way to FlipClass Success (My Session)
• See my resources at bit.ly/wsqkirch
• This is the 2nd time I've presented this session, but the first to a non-"flipclass" audience (meaning not all attendees familiar with premises of flipped learning).  Overall, I think it went very well.  I'm giving this presentation again at ISTE this summer, so as always I have a few reflections on changes I'm going to make.
• Video making:  The session was not focused on this, but taking 2-3 minutes to address it is important in making sure to knock out some common misconceptions
• Include a 1 minute or so clip of one of my actual videos so people can see what they look like, how they include my face, etc
• Talk a little more through my video making process; i.e. I pick one day each week to sit down and record them, how long does it take me, etc. 
• Day in the class - get a 1-2 minute video of a day in my flipped class from previous blog posts
• Student created problems/videos & blogging - Because I put this under the "review and assessment" part of my flipped classroom workflow, I didn't talk about it since I focused on the WSQ.  However, I need to bring this up when I talk about the WSQ chat discussion ideas because it's a huge part of my class
• I gave about 4 opportunities throughout the session for attendees to turn and talk to the person next to them about their thoughts, and the volume in the room just exploded.  I was really happy with the level of engagement in the discussion.
• Closing - need a closing slide with my contact info again, people to follow in different subject areas (it's on my resources page but I want it to be more front and center and make a point about #bettertogether and collaboration).
• Reference to "living in beta" - we are always refining, reflecting, and adjusting to best meet our students' needs; we are always going back to "what's the best use of my face-to-face time with my students".  Make a point to share that I have my first three years of reflections on my blog, and for those starting out to go back and see what things were like when I was just starting back in 2011.
• Slide Deck - I reworked it a little bit this time, but I'd like to continue to lessen the text on the slides.  However, I do feel the information is valuable and I know it enough that I'm not reading from it (except student quotes), but having the auditory and visual cues for the audience, especially with the "fire hose" amount of information I am providing during this particular session, is important.  Still need to consider what I want to do with this.
• Kahoot! - It went over well but SO MANY sessions used it at CUE that I think it was a little overused - is there something else I can model in the session that would serve the same purpose?
• Jennie Magiera Opening Keynote
• We are NOT at CUE to get better at Google, or Twitter, or Selfies... We are here to get better at:
• Differentiating Instruction
• Supporting Teachers
• Inspiring our Teachers
• Compliance does not equal engagement
• Media Mastery for Maximum Classroom Engagement (Jon Corippo)
• Don't teach the technical and the academic at the same time.  For example, the first time you use a Venn Diagram, have students compare a Big Mac vs. a Double-Double rather than something academic
• It takes repetitation for both the technical and the academic to be active
• "If you're going to teacher them everything at the beginning before they can learn, it's going to be a long year"
• Slideshare - you can look for shareable/resuable slides for presentations
• "I'm giving you plenty of time, do a good job" is interpreted by students as "I don't have to start now".  All work will expand to meet the time allotted.
• Create a "tech rehearsal" BEFORE the day it's due... then have them reflect and fix it.
• Sway into the Mix (Delaine Johnson)
• Bit.ly/CUEsway
   
• I just gave a JOT (Just One Thing) PD session on Office Mix this week, so I was glad to have a little more playing around time with it. 
• I still need to play with Office Sway a little more... not enough time :(
• SAMR SLAMR  (Stace Carter, Lainie Rowell, Julie Garcia)
• Workshop Agenda and Slides 
• This was a highly participatory workshop where we thought about ways to make certain activities "move up" the SAMR level.  Once of the biggest things that stood out to me was student COLLABORATION and then student SHARING/PUBLISHING (and receiving feedback from those outside their class)
•  Redesigning Faculty Meetings (Bill Selak)
• I was really hoping for some more ideas from the presenters, but this was basically a 15 minute presentation and 45 minute brainstorming in small groups.  I did have some takeaways though
• A PD planning team gets together once a week to plan the faculty meeting for the next week (9 days in advance)
• Location matters for your meetings!
• #nomnom- bring your staff treats - jamba juice, chips & salsa, candy, etc.  Food brings people together!
• Faculty Meeting Feedback - every single meeting.  Anonymous. 2 questions
• Was this meeting a good use of your time?  Yes, Meh, No
• Any Comments?
• After conferences, the teachers who went have to share one sentence of what they learned.  Follow up with email with even more details and resources
• *My fellows need to share at EVERY faculty meeting
• Idea - 10 minutes general announcements.  Then, discussion groups where teachers read and article and talk about it; record takeaways on Padlet or TodaysMeet
• Idea - Agenda is on GDocs so teachers can add questions and concerns before the meeting so admin can prep to answer them ahead of time.
• Idea - GForm "What technology would you like to know about?" or "How can I support you in your growth?".  Teachers come back in a month and show what they've done since that time.
• Formative Assessment Tools
•  Quick Guide/ Handout of Formative Assessment Tools 
• Formative assessment is anything that informs the student and the teacher.  It monitors student progress, informs instruction, and promotes equity (the students that are quiet have the chance for their learning to be seen/heard)
• Tools I hadn't used yet: Geddit (but it's going away...) GoFormative (loving it), ExitTicket (head of but hadn't played with yet), MasterConnect.
• I am doing a similar session at FlipCon this year, so it was nice to see how this format worked.  She went through 14 tools in an hour and it didn't seem rushed.  She stated the basics of the tools, went over the pros and cons, and then did a quick sample of the audience being students.

New Tools / Websites / Resources I came across (through conversation or Twitter #cue15)

There were several sessions per time slot I wanted to attend, so here are some notes and the resources from ones I wasn't at in person but had some great stuff to share.

• ACCESS THE CUE15 ATTENDEE COLLABORATIVE NOTES FOLDER ON GOOGLE DRIVE HERE.
• GoFormative.com - a new(er) digital formative assessment tool that allows you to include text, videos, images, 
• Students don't have to create accounts, they will enter their name
• Results come up live as they are typing or drawing.
• If students want to see their results, they need to sign up for an account.
• Students do not need to be added to a class to view an assessment - you can have it accessible with a link or a "quick code"
• Steallikeateacher.wordpress.com - Fountain Valley High School's site about their Instructional Rounds Program
• Implementation Plan for 1:1 devices - look at bottom for CUE Presentation Slides
• Ed Tech Teacher Leadership
• Started a Technology Teacher Leader (TTL) program - one teacher at each site
• Fair Use
• User Rights, Section 107 YouTube Video
• Code of Best Practices
• Slides from Presentation
• This has been an area I have been trying hard to improve on in the last year as I've learned more about what copyright and creative commons is all about. 
• Slide 16 - 90% of CC photos are not attributed; 99% are not attributed corretly
• Slide 17 - correct way to attribute CC sources
• Genius Bar - Resources
• We have been doing this with our student tech team.
• Slide 12 - "mid-year lull"
• Student application sample (want to rethink this for next year)
• Google Tips: Google Like a Boss 
• I need to remember to use the filetype more often!
• Docs to Blogs Resources
• Great tips on getting started using blogging (Kidblog)