I'm Going to a Conference, I'd Better Make a Plan . . .

A picture of me during a recent conference.  I sent this pic to my friends in other rooms to show off the awesome leather chair I found to sit in.

Recently, myself and a few colleagues have become very interested in attending conferences. Before this year I don't think I had attended a conference since I was a student teacher (10 years ago?). Currently we are preparing to go to the OCCUE Techfest. As a group we have made it to at least two other conferences this year.

I am curious about how other people prepare to attend a conference. Here's what I do:

I begin as soon as the schedule of presenters is posted. I know, oftentimes there will be changes but I can't help it. I get excited about this stuff. I start by looking at all of the presentations during each session and circling (or copy/pasting to a doc) all of the presentations I'm interested in.

I take that list and google the crap out of the presenters. This might be creepy but I'm trying to learn more about the presenters.  I am mostly interested in what grade level they teach (hopefully high school) and what subject they teach (hopefully Social Studies). I'm also interested in finding out if they have a blog or they post on twitter.  I have found this is a good way to learn about their interests and expertise.  Sometimes you can even find resources from previous presentations (slideshare, prezi etc.).

After I've done this, I rank the presentations within each session by how much I want to see them.

Then I try to convince my friends to attend my second and third choices in each session.  You know,  a little divide and conquer.

Just kidding, I don't really do that. What I really do it sit down with my friends who are attending the conference and we talk about what we really want to see.  Sometimes more than one of us really wants to see the same thing and we'll all go.  Other times one of us doesn't feel strongly about a session and will go to someone else's second choice.  It really depends.  This is one of my favorite parts of the whole process, discussing which sessions we should attend.  It forces us to decide what will be most useful for ourselves, for our department, and for our school. Maybe there is something that looks cool but might not have a practical application in our school community. We are better off spending our limited resource (time) somewhere else.

Once we have determined our schedule we are ready to attend the conference.

Sometimes, there are challenges on the day of the conference.  I recently attended a conference that had tons of people.  Way more than the organizers were expecting.  The problem was that many presentations filled up. When this happens I have two different strategies.  One is to attend the presentation that is in the room immediately before the presentation that will fill up. If I want to see the presentation in room 123 during session 2 but I'm afraid it will fill up, I will attend whatever presentation is in room 123 during session 1.

The other strategy is to skip a session and wait in line outside of the room you want to be in.  I skip the presentations during session 1 so I can wait outside room 123 for the session 2 presentation.

Here's a picture of two of my friends during a presentation. They were only moderately interested in this presentation and wanted to make sure they had a seat for the next presentation in this room. I took this creepy picture because I was in line outside waiting to get into the room next door.

I have done both of these. Be careful about using the first strategy though.  Sometimes organizers will try to kick everyone out of the room after each session.  If that happens, then you sat through a presentation you weren't really interested in for nothing.

After the day is over, how do we share all that we've learned with our colleagues? We create a Google Doc (see sample from a conference earlier this year). This allows us to give thoughts and feedback on presentations we saw that day and to include links to the presenters' resources.

If the conference was good, our final step is to look at the calendar and figure our which conference we will attend next.

Any tips you'd like to share?

Website for iPad Preparation

Next year we will have iPads. Everyone in the whole world.

Well, I guess not everyone but sometimes it feels like that.  The students will all have iPads.

One of the things I've been working on is a website that can be a one-stop shop for kids each day in my class. I envision them walking in and going straight to a webpage that will have a collection of the resources/activities/information that they will need for that day. This will also be valuable for students who miss class that day.

Here is what I have so far - Baier Government

I think the key is the calendar page. This is where students can get their information for each day. I am trying it out this semester after spending much of my Christmas Break working on it.  However, I have to share the iPads with the rest of the school so my students don't get to use them everyday. I'm hoping that it will still be valuable, even if students are accessing it mostly from home.



I would like to give a special thanks to Reuben Hoffman. I was inspired largely by his class website and stole many of my ideas from there.

Any feedback is appreciated and I will be sure to share what works and what doesn't as the semester progresses.

Dean of Students as Blogger?

My school's Dean of Students recently asked me about setting up a "Dean's Blog" to respond to issues as they arise in different times of the year.

For the last couple years I have asked our Deans to come lead my class discussion about student rights during our Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Unit. There are often good questions asked and the students appreciate the opportunity to ask their questions in a "safe" environment (rather then waiting until they are actually in trouble for something). The students also remark that it makes the Deans seem more "normal." I guess they don't get a lot of opportunity to interact with them unless they have broken a school rule.

Oftentimes, the questions are about a wide variety of issues including dress code, behavior at school dances, senior pranks, etc. It would be great to be able to share these discussions and responses with a wider audience of students.

So I believe our Dean is trying to give other students an opportunity to have their questions addressed in a similar way. I think this is a great idea. 

Is there anything similar already out there that we can look at?

Any suggestions?

e-portfolios, what do you think?

Next semester some of us are going to have the students create e-portfolios using Google Sites.  Our vision is that students will have a page for each major project/unit of learning that includes:

1. Sample of the work (picture, video, link, etc.)

2. Reflection on the work (like a blog post)

3. A list of the most important concepts learned in that unit (which would become a study guide for the final exam)


I am very excited that there are other teachers who are interested in this project. It started in a conversation I was having with a colleague (Melissa Padgett @PadgettMelissa on twitter).  She was saying that she wanted to have the students create their own study guide throughout the semester that they could use for the final.  Well, I had been thinking about having students make a portfolio collection of their work from throughout the semester. We both teach American Government so it seemed natural for us to combine these things into an e-portfolio project.

Our semester starts when we return from Christmas break in January so we need to figure out all of the details by then. Some of our questions are:

1. How do we grade these?

2. How do we keep students motivated to complete them?

3. What information should we require be included?


Have you ever done anything similar? Any feedback or tips you can share?  Comment below or reach me on twitter @MattBaier1234

Animoto is pretty cool, so are these gingerbread houses

Yesterday we had our annual Gingerbread House Competition.  Various classes that choose to participate create a gingerbread house that is judged by the ASB class.  Winners get fabulous prizes.

The last few years I have gone around with a couple ASB students to photograph and judge the gingerbread houses.  They look at these photos with the rest of the ASB students to determine the winners. I have always enjoyed this because I get to see all of the class creations.

After the judging, classes can bring their gingerbread houses to the library so everyone can see them.  However, not all of the houses make it to the library.  I know of at least one that was eaten within 10 minutes of the judging. I think its too bad that everyone doesn't get an opportunity to see all the cool gingerbread houses.

As I was taking pictures I was thinking, "I should post these somewhere so that everyone can see them."  As I was uploading the pics from my phone to my computer I remembered Animoto. It is a really cool website and app that allows you to quickly and easily transform pics (and even short video clips) into a movie.  There are themes and music that you can choose from.

When I first saw Animoto I was thinking about how students could use it next semester.  I didn't initially think about how I could use it.

Here is my video:






Let me know what you think. What other things could we being using this for?

First Blog Post - iPad/YouTube Upload Tip

I've been wanting to blog for a while but didn't really know what to blog about. What do I know this is useful to other people? I've learned so much from other people's blogs I don't know what I can contribute.

I follow a lot of other blogs, most of them are about using technology in education. There is a trend towards using iPads (or similar devices) in more classrooms.  Our school is preparing to go 1:1 with iPads next year.  In preparation for that we currently have about 200 iPads (for ~1700 students) that teachers can check out and use in their classes.

I have noticed that some bloggers are doing similar things. And I've noticed that they are encountering challenges that we have also encountered.  And, sometimes, they have a problem that we have already figured out how to solve.

Aha!

That is what I can share and blog about.  I can share our iPad challenges and experiences.

Maybe teachers from my own school will read this and they can see what cool things we are doing on campus with our iPads, that would be great.

With that said, here's a tip for today:

If you want to upload videos from the iPad to YouTube you need to create a YouTube channel.  Just creating a YouTube account or using a Google Account to sign in to YouTube doesn't work. I don't know why. That's just how it is.  Kudos to my colleague and esteemed AP World teacher, Jeff Owen, for figuring this out.

Here's a quick video showing how to create a YouTube Channel if you already have a YouTube or Google Account