NJASA Techspo 2013

Jeff Bradbury from TeacherCast

Dr. Matthew Peterson - Keynote at Techspo 2013

On January 31st and February 1st, I attended and present the annual NJASA Techspo 2013 (#techspo2013)  in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I presented "The Connected Educator leading a Connected Generation with the Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Edward Aguiles (@EdAguiles). Besides school administrators attending there were several education technology teachers and administrators in attendance. The keynote of the conference was done by  Dr. Matthew Peterson from the Mind Institute. In his presentation, he discussed his personal struggles in school having Dyslexia. He explained that the motive behind him trying to develop an environment where students would learn math has three keys. Interactivity, Informative Feedback and Intrinsic motivation. He spoke about the need to have an action one needs to own the action. He also spoke about the Hawthorne Effect. Wikipedia describes the Hawthorne Effect is that changes in participants' behavior during the course of a study may be "related only to the special social situation and social treatment they received."  The Mind Institute has developed a software that teaches math to students without the need of words. As the student continues to succeed by answering one question, the program builds upon what was previously learnt to a more advance question. Dr. Peterson's perseverance and tenacity in developing this software was amazing and he kept expanding his own personal knowledge in order to understand what students would need to understand math. 

 I then attended a presentation done on 2015 PARCC Testing - Are you Ready? The presenter asked "What drives technology in your district? Who designs your infrastructure? Which comes first the technology or the budget?" He mentioned the technology requirements that can be found on the NJ PARCC website. Not only the hardware needs but also the student technology literacy skills they would need such as 3rd graders would need to type a full page in 40 minutes while 5th graders would need to type two full pages in 60 minutes and would need to know how to log into the system. There were many question and very few answers to what to actually expect for the test coming in 2015. "We can plan to fail to fail to plan" for this inevitable online testing.  He suggested that the technology team, technicians, be available for the test and we, the attendees, should begin to introduce students to online assessments as well as install laptops in the individual classrooms so that students could begin to practice for the PARCC exams.

Maximizing Human Capital by Enhancing Teacher Capacity was presented by Teachscape and Steve Engravalle (@iSchoolLeader). They talked the new New Jersey Teacher Evaluation EE4NJ and how would the 15% of the teacher evaluation regarding associating student test scores with teacher evaluations. Teachscape Reflect, through technology, has developed how school districts can perform this process.  

Following the Edcamp rule of "two feet", I also visited a couple of other presentations by my friends, Jeff Bradbury - TeacherCast - TeacherCast:  A Place for Teachers to Help Other Teachers (@Teachcast), Bill Krakower - Embedding Standard-Based Digital Resources into the Classroom (@wkrawker). To check out some of the attendees and presentations of Techspo 2013 on TeacherCast.

On Friday, I attended the keynote by David Pogue from the New York Times, technology session. His presentation was engaging and funny. David presented about several new technologies that are coming in the future. He talked about augmented reality, pocket CPU, and Web 2.0. As always I found his presentation to be exciting, informative, interesting, and with his great sense of humor, David's presentation was great. After the keynote, I attended several presentation regarding the use of mobile technology for school safety, Twitter and You, Great Apps and Sites for School Leaders, Edmodo a Free Powerful Web 2.0 School Tool, and Interstate Collaboration Through Web 2.0 Tools. These presentations were done by colleagues and friends that I have come to appreciate and admire in the field of education technology in the state of New Jersey. 

Overall the experience was one of the best I have had at Techspo over the past several years. As the field of technology continue to be innovative in the process of instruction and learning, I suspect that in the coming years for Techspo will be dynamic, creative and be constantly changing as our society continues to change in the 21st century. Kudos go out to Thomas Murray from Pa, Edward Aguiles, Bill Krakower, Samantha Morra, Diana Potts, Steve Engravalle, Erica Hartman, Jeff Bradbury, Dana Sirotiak, Elissa Malespina, and Melissa Butler. 

Edscape 2012

Edscape 2012

Vickie Davis and myself at ISTE 2012

Edscape 2012 Conference was hosted at the New Milford High School, NJ. Principal Eric Sheninger, @nhms_principal on Saturday October 13, 2012, had several fantastic presenters. Before the keynote, Vickie Davis-@coolcatteacher, began, I was apart of a live broadcast of #satchat with hosts Scott Rocco, Bill Krakower, Jeff Bradbury and Brad Currie. The video can be seen on YouTube. After this broadcast, Vickie Davis presentation was inspirational, motivational and made me realized that the only thing I can change in my school district is ME. "Expectation and Attitude matter", "leaders, you can remove the obstacle or be the obstacle" were a couple of the her points in her presentation. I over the years I have followed @coolcatteacher and encouraged the Sayreville technology teachers and school librarians to subscribe to her posts. Her presentation can be found on her website.

After her presentation, I then attended Patrick Larkin's presentation on Choosing Your Century. Patrick is from Burlington High School in Burlington, Mass. He discussed the need for educators to embrace digital tools in order to create more collaborative school environments for educators and students. Also the need to evolve from teacher-led environments to being learner-led. he included examples of how he was able to implement this in his high school. One item that really struck me was how he moved his office into the hallways of his high school. After lunch I presented twice on how does BYOD look like in your classroom and bringing your own device in your school/district.My presentations can be found on SlideShare.

This was my second time attending a conference at New Milford High School organized by the principal Eric Scheninger. Previously I attended the TSETC conference and was influenced to make sure I kept in contact with Eric to see when the 2012 conference would take place. The connections that I made at Edscape have continued until now. I have found that my Professional Learning Network (PLN) from the Edscape conference has taught me:

• on how to be in a leader/administrator in education, 
• the need to collaborate with other professionals,  
• the need to be innovative and
• to be visionary in the implementation of technology in the classroom.

Due to the above reasons I will be attending the next Edscape 2013 Conference on Saturday October 19, 2013. I hope you plan to be there. 

2012: My Year In Review

2012 : My Year In  Review

State of Now #140 conference 2012

Lisa Thumann at Edcamp Leadership NJPSA

Marc Seigel at Edcamp Philly 2012

This year has been a great year for my Professional Learning Network (PLN-#njed, #satchat, #teachercast), but difficult in other instances.  My year began with me presenting at the NJASA Techspo conference in January 2012 with the Sayreville Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Edward Aguiles (@eaguiles), on Using Available Technology Resources in Your School District. I have been a member of Twitter for years but did not participate but "lurked" to see what other were twitting in my social network. After the NJASA conference, I began to be more involved in my social network due to the contacts I had made from the previous year and at the conference. In February I had the honor of presenting at the PETE and C conference in Hershey, Pa. I  caught up with friends from the previous year's conference and hung out with friends and colleagues from PAECT. It is always an honor to represent NJAET at this conference, and the board members of PAECT are very much involved in the use of technology within education. This conference includes workshops, panel discussions and presentations on both infrastructure, coaching and curriculum aspects of technology within academia. After researching BYOD for over two years and proposing BYOD to the Sayreville School District, I presented at the NJECC 2012 Annual conference at Montclair State University my process. It was great to meet up with great education technologists, Lisa Thumann-@lthumann, Samatha Morra-@sammorra, Barry Haines-@barryhaines, Sue Sullivan, etc. at the conference. The contacts, presentations, etc. at the conference inspired me to continue with pushing forward, with what I believe, is cutting edge of technology in my own school district.

As year continued, I participated in Tabcamp, Edcamp Harrisburg, Edcamp Philly, #140 Conference in NY: The State of Now, Edcamp Leadership, the first West Essex Tech Symposium, Edscape 2012, and at NJASL 2012 Fall Conference. I also attended many webinars by edWeb.net on Ed Leadership 2.0: Essential Skills for Innovative Principals, BYOD, 1 to 1, Emerging Tech for School Librarians, etc. Each conference and community was innovative, inventive, inspiring, enthusiastic, and gave me a boost in my passion for technology. In the beginning of the year, I began doing my Ph.D. in Education Technology at Walden University but due to the demands of work and family, I stopped. Then I signed up for CIO certification done at Rutgers University and this opened my understanding on many of the technology infrastructure needs of the Sayreville School District and that without the infrastructure, many of the technologies used in the district would not function correctly or provide necessary advanced technology for the classroom.

My PLN has really grown over the year and the professionals I have meet and become friends with have really impacted my belief that technology will change how instruction and learning will be done now and in the future. K-12 education has to change and how students learn today is different from when I went to school. Being in the classroom observing teachers and students, I realize that using technology as a tool allows for all students to achieve their maximum ability and provide them the ability to be inventive and innovative.

The 2013 year is one of amazing/wonderful possibilities. I am looking forward the contacts, conversations, discussions, innovations and what will happen in the coming year.

EdCamp NJ 2012

I am apart of a fantastic group of innovative and impressive educators in New Jersey that organized EdcampNJ. I arrived late due to a previous engagement but this was still a great un-conference. This event was based on the unconference model such as Edcamp - Philly, Edcamp - Harrisburg and Tabcamp -NJ, where the participants/attendees of the conference created the conference. These workshops are more conversational rather than a presentation because many workshop attendees participate within the presentation of the topic.  There were teachers, techies, librarians, administrators, aspiring administrators, musicians, etc, present to get or provide professional development on topics that were of interest to the participants. It was great to see Principal El from Delware. We attended a workshop about involving our parents and community in social networking. The discussions included how to get teachers to use social media in the classroom, the need for administrators to model using social media within the educational community and the importance of using services such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. during times of emergency. Everyone had a great time. There were many prizes including an iPad mini device. It was an honor to be involved with such an awesome set of educators. The EdCampNJ website can be found at EdCampNJ.   Join us next year at Linwood Middle School, North Brunswick, NJ on November 23rd, 2013. See you there!

NJASL 2012 Conference

        I presented at the annual New Jersey Association of School Librarians (NJASL) in Long Branch, NJ on Saturday December 1st along with Michael Ettore, Principal of Asher Holmes Elementary School and Kimberly Alexander Supervisor-Instructional Technology, Media and ESL. Our topic was Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) explaining what it is, why many districts are adopting this mode of integrating technology in the learning process, what are some of the issues that is associated with BYOD and the process Sayreville Public Schools took in developing it's own BYOD program. Michael and Kimberly presented 2 great projects that their students created in Animoto using their own personal devices they brough to school. Questions in audience included district responsibilities for these devices, discipline issues in the classroom, the instructional process in the classroom, filtering of websites and being CIPA compliant, etc. My presentation can be found on SlideShare.

     After the presentation, I attended a presentation done by Barbara DeSantis and Katie Llera, teachers from the Sayreville School District. They explained how students used iPads to create movie trailers for books they had read in the library. They additional spoke about creating QR Codes for these trailers and other websites to link the books to additional resouces. One project they mentioned was how they created QR Codes for teacher websites of the Middle School. These codes were then placed on the doors of the classrooms so that during parent conferences parents could scan the codes and it would link them to the teacher websites so that the parents could see the teacher's websites. There was lot of energy by both presenters and participants.
This is always a great conference to attend.

PETE and C Conference 2012 in Hershey, Pennyslyvania

At the PETE and C conference in Hershey, Gary Stager was one of the keynote speakers on February 13, 2012.  The Best Educational Ideas in the World: Adventures on the Frontiers of Learning. There are places where the desires, talent and competence of children are nurtured, celebrated and respected. His presentation took you on an expedition to some of the world’s best educational ideas. Each stop on the tour, different schools he visited, shared inspiration from learning contexts built upon young people’s remarkable capacity for intensity. These ideas were to provide a foundation for meeting the needs of each child, technology integration, increased teacher quality and the fuel for sustaining innovation. While viewed in isolation, these ideas might inspire incremental solutions to specific problems. Combined, they represented educational transformation. His presentation focused mainly on student-centered learning and the need to "raise the bar" and challenge students to control their own learning process.

I went to the Heshey Hotel to hear Bill Dolton speak about Leveraging Leadership: The Admin Responsibility. He spoke about school administrators having a crucial leadership role to promote effective technology use in the classroom. That when administrators show teachers technology are valued, engage in meaningful conversation about technology, and model its use, teachers will respond. His session featured tools to provide leadership and a discussion forum followed to share strategies on how it could be done in our schools.

While at the Hershey Hotel, I also attended a session by Scott Garrigon on How Technology Leaedrs can Keep their Edge. The session covered how can educational technology leaders to stay up-to-date in our fast changing field? Leadership positions takes us out of our comfort zone, demanding deeper expertise with the latest issues. Scott shared the dozen best sources of news, videos, talks, and analysis to stay on top of trends and innovations in education and in technology.

I the presented on Banning or Embracing mobile device? On February 14, 2012 in the Empire D room located in the Hershey Lodge. This presentation will be about using mobile devices in your school or district. Some topics that will discussed include consumerization of IT, Responsible Use/Acceptable Use Policies, disruptive and inappropriate use of mobile devices, digital content, student ownership of mobile devices over the past year, number of devices sold by Apple, Droid devices, tablets, etc.

Presentation can found on slideshare and on this website.

NJASA Techspo 2012

NJASA Techspo 2012

Presented and attended the 2012 NJASA Techspo in Atlantic City, NJ the past couple days. Great conference!

Thursday's keynote was Ian Jukes and he presented on the Understanding the Digital Generation. In his presentation, Ian mentioned about the effects of digital bombardment and the implications this holds for the future of education. Today we have a new kind of student. Due to this bombardment, the today's students brain is wired differently. Naturally, our brains designed for visual content, therefore visual learners. Students today are more inclined to process images than texts. Scanning technologies have found that the digital generation reads in a F-pattern versus previous generation reads in a Z curve. They are wired for multimedia content. Nothing is wrong with the present generation, they are just different. Just as previous generations complained about their own children. Ian compared digital learners versus the educator how they received information, parallel and multitasking, digital learners prefer processing pictures, sounds, color, and video before text while many educators prefer to provide text before pictures, sounds and video. Jukes' presentation can be found at 21st century fluency website. Thought provoking and invigorating presentation!

Presented with Ed Aguiles, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, on A Practical Approach to Leadership Through the Use of Available Technology. Presentation can be found in Prezi at http://prezi.com/bq5z3ru0v8ji/njasa-techspo-2012/.

 Attended presentation Bullying and Social Networking: Legal Challenge for Students, Staff and Boards of Education in the Age of Cyberspace. The attorneys presentation focused on cyberbullying that takes place off campus. NJDOE includes anyone being bullied and harassed. Not only student to student but also teacher to student or student to teacher. Many questions were raised and the discussion included different court decisions regarding student freedom of speech and what school district's can do to discipline students. New information for me.

Friday's keynote was done by Jhone Ebert from Clark County School District, Nevada. She presented on how she provides technical services for students in the 5th largest school district in the nation. She mentioned that 21st century learning as part of a greater learning community that includes online learning and 24/7 access to resources and the need to harness technology to advance a new model of schooling. Looking at the movie the "Wizard of Oz", we all grew up in Kansas but now we are living in Oz. We are need to ask the right questions regarding schooling of today and the need to embrace a new ways of thinking. Ebert mentioned the need to have a reverse mentor. She talked about having a student to have a conversation on what they see as a need for their school or how they would like to see their school. She showed a presentation done by a student that believed in an iSchool. Great presentation.

Saw Web 2.0 Tools for Administrators by Sammantha Morra. Her presentation can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/smorra/web-20-presentation-1940869. Morra talked about twitter, quizlet, social bookmarking using delicious, and the need to tag. Other resources can be found https://sites.google.com/site/web20samanthamorra/education-blogs. Really enjoyed this presentation! I learned about many new tools.

Attended a late presentation by Woodcliff Lakes on globalization of educational services. Collaboration was done in social studies between Woodcliff Lakes students and students in China. Great project and presentation.