Courageous Edventures Challenge - Day 7

Today is the last day of the Courageous Edventures Challenge!  I made it!!!  Today's challenge asked that we decide on a problem of practice that we'd like to tackle, to try something new and to aim big!  I think that One of the problems that I see that exists in the district that I teach in, is that we have access to sooooo much technology.  Not just physical technology, like laptops, ipads, etc, but all of the tools that are out there.  I think that we present our teachers with so much, that they can become overwhelmed and even shut down at times.  I think that we, as educators, try to do everything and do everything well.  What we need to realize is that we can definitely do anything, BUT we can't do everything!  This is hard for educators because we want to be the best at everything that we do all the time!

Through reading Courageous Edventures and doing a lot of research over the past 7 days, I think the solution to this that I would like to attempt to put into practice is to put together an official Playdate!  For those of you that haven't heard of these Playdates, they stand for "People Learning and Asking Y: Digital Age Technology Exploration.  Jennie and some of her colleagues came up with this innovative idea in which teachers are exposed to a lot but have the choice to decide what they want to play with for that day!  I mentioned the idea to my Executive Director and she is excited about the possibility of bringing Playdates to our district!  So, I've aimed big.  Now for the planning to begin.  Time to figure out all of the details, the who, what, when, where, why and how!  I'm up for it and I'm excited to give teachers time to play!  No lesson plans, no staff meetings, no requirements, just time to play.

What problem of practice have you identified that you'd like to solve?

Courageous Edventures Challenge - Day 6

Day 6's challenge asked that we create 3 goals for new things that we'd like to try and discuss them via blogging.  Let's see.....

1.  Sketchnoting
This has been on my "list of things to do" ever since I returned from ISTE this summer.  I just have not yet delved into it.  I need to go ahead and order Sylvia Duckworth's book (Sketchnotes for Educators) and just get started!  I've spent hours watching YouTube videos about it, but haven't started to implement it, which is surprising to me as I am very much so a visual learner! 

2.  Start creating YouTube content
This is another goal of mine that's been on my "things to do" list.  I spend sooooo much time on YouTube watching all kind of videos from inspirational videos, how to videos, daily vlogs, makeup videos (don't judge), cooking videos, etc...the list goes on and on!  I need to go on ahead and begin to add to what's out there!  Who knows....maybe the way that I present some content will be better received than someone else out there.  Won't know unless I try, right?

3.  Create a dynamic, inspirational keynote speech....and deliver it!
This is one thing that I know will get crossed off in the next couple of months and I am UBER excited about it!  I have started a list of topics to cover and ideas to speak about in my Google Keep app and have been adding to it like crazy!  I've also, no surprise, been watching a ton of YouTube videos about inspiration and how to deliver keynote speeches.  I used to work in customer service prior to teaching, was a high school teacher, taught teachers while working in the professional development department, so I've always been a people person.  I think it'll be interesting to put together a keynote that I not only create, but deliver as well!  Honestly, I don't think I'm any more special than the next person.  I put my pants and shoes on one at a time, just like everyone else.  I have been told in the past that I have a story to tell, that I'm inspirational and relatable.  I receive these compliments when they're given, however I'm just myself.  I treat others as I'd want to be treated.  With the things that I have been through, especially over the past year, people have asked me how I do it all, and how do I continue to be so positive.  Well, I know that I'm blessed.  I have a purpose to fulfill while I'm here on earth.  Although, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to be when I grow up...lol....I know that it involves helping others and being a positive, glass half full, inspirational, sunshiny person while I'm here.  I hope to be able to convey that through my developed keynote soon!

The scary thing about writing about goals, is that you make yourself vulnerable, transparent, and are putting them out there for others to read, maybe judge, and hold you accountable.  Not an easy thing to do.  I look forward to seeing how I develop and nurture these goals over the next year!

What are your top three goals that you'd like to accomplish?

Courageous Edventures Challenge - Day 5

Twitter Chats are an awesome opportunity to engaged in some right on time, relevant professional development!  By simply searching for the hashtag of your choice, you are immersed into deep conversations with educators all around the world that are just as passionate about what you are!  They are fast paced and full of goodness so you have to keep up!  A great tool to do this is TweetDeck.  This allows you to monitor your Twitter feed, notifications, messages and Twitter Chats in an easy format!  Try it out if you haven't.  It literally takes 2 seconds to set up.

This challenge came right on time!  Last night I participated in the #squirrelschat.  This is a chat facilitated by different educators once a month that are a part of the Alpha Squirrels.  Alpha Squirrels are educator ambassadors for the Reflector App.  This chat takes place on a Thursday night at 8pm EST once a month.

I have also recently participated in the #gaetc17 chat within the past week as well.  What I love about participating in different Twitter chats is that you gain the perspective of educators all around the world.  Now that Twitter has a capacity of 280 characters vs 140, the conversation that takes place has even more content and meaning.

The list of Twitter Chats that are out there is HUGE!  Cybraryman has curated an extensive list that I can't wait to delve into and explore.  Another awesome thing about these chats is that you can start your own!  All you need is a hashtag and the conversation can take off!  Recently, I was able to train one of our assistant superintendents to host her own Twitter Chat with her region principals.  It's taken off and she's now had 2 of them!  She used TweetDeck to facilitate her chat and schedule her posts.  Doing so, she finds, allows her to be more engaged in the chat as opposed to worrying about posting the questions/prompts and then being active in the conversation.  It's really been an amazing opportunity!

Have you tried a Twitter Chat before?  What are your favorites?

Courageous Edventures Challenge - Day 4

Today's challenge asked that we spend an hour previewing educational technology content and using EduClipper to keep track of what we find.  Being 100% transparent, I had never used EduClipper before so I deferred back to what I know and am familiar with, Pinterest!  Who doesn't love Pinterest?  I know that I do!  I did create an EduClipper account and played around with it, but to save time and really delve into the content exploration of this day's challenge, I went back to what I know.  I will revisit EduClipper at some point though.

I have created 2 boards that really speak to my work. I sometimes find myself getting lost in what I call the Pinterest "time suck."  I mean, I could spend hours on end looking around on Pinterest for tech related resources, recipes, DIY activities, home decor ideas, etc.  I LOVE all of the educational technology resources that are out there.  Pinterest doesn't just have to be for all of the girly froo-froo stuff, but there are a ton of resources out there.

https://www.pinterest.com/nrachell/google-classroom/
The first board that I'd like to share covers a bunch of Google Classroom and G-Suite resources and articles.  My board titled, "Google Classroom," has a ton of resources that I've found about how to use each of the tools in the G-Suite and innovative and creative ways on how to integrate them into the curriculum.

https://www.pinterest.com/nrachell/21st-century-education/
This board, titled, "21st Century Education" has what I refer to as all of the other resources that aren't Google related!  It really is a hodge podge of resources and I probably need to streamline it a little bit more.  When ever I find a tool that's not related to Google, I drop it on this board.  It could be about an app, a website, a tool, anything that has to do with technology integration and what that looks like for K-12 students and teachers.

Did you attempt day 4 of this challenge?  What tool did you use to curate your resources?  Did you find any resources that stood out to you?

Courageous Edventures Challenge - Day 3

Today's #courageousedventures Challenge was to spend an hour on educational technology YouTube playlists.  I spent some time on the YouTube channels of Tony Vincent, EdTechTeam and Teacher's Tech (Jamie Keet).  You definitely want to search for all of these on YouTube and follow their channels as they offer a TON of educational technology information, how to videos, tutorials, etc. You could really fall into the YouTube "time suck" with these channels!

Tony Vincent in the man behind the website, Learning in Hand.  You definitely want to check that out as well!  He is chalk full of all kinds of information from creating your own avatars, to using emojis, all kinds of web 2.0 information and everything else in between!  You can find a ton of videos on his website, but his YouTube channel also provides a lot of great videos as well.  I love the ease of his videos and how when he teaches you something, he goes step by step.

EdTechTeam is another channel that I spent some time on today.  I love this channel because there are so many different "presenters" of information that you get to gain a ton of different perspectives and you are able to learn a lot of information from a lot of different people all across the world!  I may be a little partial to this channel because I was able to present at the Best Year Yet Virtual Summit last month!  I blogged about it when it happened and I am still in awe that I was given the opportunity to present alongside some of my educational technology idols!  I digress....this channel is definitely one that you need to check out and subscribe to for all kinds of ideas!  Here you can find live author chats, demo slams, recorded webinars, etc!

The last YouTube channel that I explored today was one called Teacher's Tech and Jamie Keet is the man behind the channel.  He pretty much walks you step by step through different educational technology tools and resources. His videos are really simple and streamlined.  I like that he makes all of the content simple and easy to understand to the point that you could follow along with him and do what he's doing at the same time.  He has playlists for EVERYTHING!!!  His tutorials are Google and MAC heavy and that works for me, because so am I!  Like the two previously mentioned channels, subscribe to this one as well!  

I loved being able to explore different educational technology YouTube channels.  I heard recently, at a conference, that people are relying more heavily on learning how to do things via YouTube rather than looking for the information on Google.  With the videos that these three channels have created, I can definitely see this being true.  About a year ago I was putting together a piece of IKEA furniture for my mother and instead of reading their instructions, I found someone on YouTube that had put the same piece of furniture together and followed along with them!  If we do that for our day to day activities, like putting furniture together, then why not for learning how to better incorporate technology into our classrooms?

There you have it!  Day 3....DONE!  What YouTube channels did you explore today?

Courageous Edventures Challenge - Day 2

Today's #couraeousedventures challenge was to commit to a conference.  Jennie asks that we research different educational technology conferences and commit to attending at least one.  Once we have selected that conference, we are asked to blog about why we chose that specific conference and what we wish to learn as a result. 

Every year, edSurge puts out a visual wheel of the top K-12 Education Technology Conferences.  Here is a link to the wheel.

I print this wheel off every year and post it up in my office for a few reasons:

1. To see the latest and greatest conferences that are out there to attend.
2. As a reminder to possibly present at at least one of these conferences.
3. As a reminder to hop on Twitter during these conferences to see what's going on.

Every year I make it a point to attend the Georgia Educational Technology Conference (GaETC) and the International Society for Technology Education (ISTE) Conference.  I have presented at GaETC a few times as well as in the Exhibit Hall at ISTE.  I absolutely love the energy of the passionate educators at each of these conferences.  ISTE presents a global perspective of instructional technology as there are presenters and attendees from all across the world.  These 2 conferences are no brainers for me!  They happen every year!  I have toyed around with the idea of not attending ISTE and going to FeTC instead or Miami Device, but I always come back to ISTE.  There really is no other conference out there that brings like minded, techie people together!  

Hopefully, I will be attending Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) this year as I have been accepted to present on a panel with some of my fellow Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert colleagues!  This presents an amazing opportunity to share the story of how 2 districts have been able to partner together and become educational technology partners.  

This challenge did indeed force me to take a look at different conferences that are out there, but honestly, these 2 conferences provide me with something new each and every year!   I hope to add TCEA to this list of conferences this year.

Which conferences do you attend every year?  What do you get out of them?

Courageous Edventures - Challenge Accepted!

Recently, I've been extended an AMAZING opportunity to be engaged in some professional development that I can't wait to share with you!  More information coming soon.  As a part of this opportunity, I've been doing some research, watching a lot of Ted Talks and inspirational videos.  This has brought me to a wonderful book called "Courageous Edventures" by Jennie Magiera.  I have not been able to put this book down since I got my hands on it!

Towards the end of the book, Jennie gives a seven-day challenge for those that want to power up and reignite their innovation exploration plan!  If you know me, you know I love a challenge!  I gladly accepted the challenge and even tweeted about it to hold myself accountable!  This challenge encourages you to spend 1 hour a day for the next 7 days completing tasks that will lead you to a renewed sense of innovation and thinking about a new challenge that you would like to identify, pursue and solve!

Today is the first day of the challenge and according to the book, I needed to spend an hour on what Jennie calls, a "blog bender!"  I was to spend an hour searching for different educational technology blogs and then start a blog if I didn't already have one.  Well, I already have a blog so I spent my time searching the web for some inspiration!

My thought for today's challenge was that I would research a few new blogs and see what they had to offer.  I went to Google and searched, "educational technology blogs."  Sure, a TON of blogs populated, and then I had a squirrel moment....what else is new?  I remembered that Leslie provided her website information during her session at GaETC, so I decided to go visit!  I literally just spent the last hour on Leslie Fisher's website, lesliefisher.com.  I have followed Leslie on Twitter for years.  I always attend her sessions when I'm at a conference that she's presenting at, however, I have never visited her website.  I have no idea how that's even possible, but it is!  Well, I do now and it's just as amazing as she is!

Now, the challenge was to spend an hour searching for blogs.  Leslie does indeed have a blog on her website but I spent the majority of my time searching all around her website and found a TON of cool tools that I can use!  She has an older video on her blog about changing the resolution to something other than the suggested resolutions when presenting on a Macbook.  I found the most value in the section called "Resources."  Leslie has graciously listed .pdfs of a lot of her sessions.  I may or may not have spent more than an hour searching through these.  What I appreciate about Leslie is that she provides information about all kinds of topics: IOS, Android, Chromebooks, Web 2.0 resources, iPads, photography, Twitter, etc!  You really can get lost in time on her website....I did!  I HIGLY encourage you to go over to her website and delve into all that's there!  It won't be as fun as seeing her present in person, but it will definitely give you a sense of her great personality and all of the ed tech knowledge floating around in her brain! 

I loved this first day of the #courageousedventures challenge!  I loved having this hour set aside to engage in some professional development for myself.  I use Twitter a lot for my PD as I have the best PLN in the world, but I could definitely see me spending some time doing some organic searching of blogs in the future. 

Did you take on the challenge?  Which blogs did you come across?  Did you start your own blog?  Share it below so we can read all about the things you are doing!