Creating Spaghetti Taco Moments

WOW!  I am still floating on cloud 9 from my experience presenting yesterday afternoon with EdTechTeam at their Virtual Summit!  Yesterday was definitely a spaghetti taco moment for me!  My presentation focused around the critical thinking strand of the 4 C's: communication, creativity, communication and critical thinking.  Critical thinking is often the least favorite of the 4 to present on, however, I welcomed and appreciated the charge of making it more engaging, liked and fun through this presentation.  Molly Bennett from EdTechTeam put this all day virtual experience together and it was AMAZING!  Participants literally participated in PD in their PJ's!  I learned so much from the other 11 presenters and am so eager and excited to begin implementing what I learned!  See my previous post before this one for more details and the schedule of the day!

I was truly honored to be presenting virtually alongside such #edtech leaders as Dee Lanier and Holly Clark (Hyperdocs anyone???)! Like I totally had a few fan girl moments!  Like, what did I do to be able to present with these phenomenal #edtech gurus?!?!?!?


Part of my presentation focused on choosing "tech with intent" and being intentional about what you want your students to know and understand before you choose the tool that will deliver the content.  I also talked about a video (included in my presentation) that I recently watched about a mom that works for Buzz Feed that did an experiment in which she told her kids, "yes" every day for a week.  One of her kids wanted spaghetti tacos for dinner!!  What?!?!?  Well, since she was doing this experiment, she had to say yes!  LOL!  And guess what....her kids ate, and ate, and ate those tacos some more....something they don't normally do. Her kids will ALWAYS remember the day that mom let them eat spaghetti tacos.  This got me to thinking that we should be creating those "spaghetti taco" moments in our classrooms and with our teachers.  What will they walk away and remember from their interactions with us?  Think about the teachers you had while growing up.  What made them memorable?  Was it the content, or HOW they made it interesting, relatable, and fun?

I also shared how we can integrate the SAMR (substitution, augmentation, modification and redefinition) to improve and increase thought processing with our students.  Engaging students in activities that encourage critical thinking will create those spaghetti taco moments that will drive the content.  The technical tools are not what's important.  All the tech tools do is deliver the content that we want to and are charged with getting across.

Link to my presentation: http://bit.ly/2yl9KM5

I received some awesome feedback in both the chat on the live stream as well as through Twitter.  I definitely blushed a few times at the comments that came through Twitter:

 

 

 























The event was over 5 hours long and included not only the presentations from the 12 presenters, but a TON of awesome giveaways!  If you missed it, you missed out.  But don't fret!  Because it was streamed through YouTube, you can totally watch it again, and again, and again!

All of the presentations were amazing and chalk full of information!  My presentation began at the 4:33 mark and ended around the 4:51 mark.  I would be honored if you took a few moments to check it out!

As you are putting your lesson plans together and thinking about what you want your students to know as a result of your teaching, I encourage you to think about creating those spaghetti taco moments that they will always remember....