When I realized that I was indeed in the right place, my second and third thoughts were, "I'd like to see THAT vendor floor," and, "I bet they have cool SWAG." I also thought that the combination of conferences in this one building presented an unusual confluence of people and ideas.
But with my limited surfing knowledge, and abundant time eating alone after sessions wrapped up each day, I started to see parallels between education technology and surfing.
1. Educational technology, like surfing, is a balancing act. The first session I attended was TechShare Live, where four EdTech leaders each presented new and exciting pieces of technology in a rapid-fire round-robin. This included technology like smart refrigerators, programmable drones, microphone dodgeballs, and holograms projected from a phone. I also sat in very interesting presentations on both augmented and virtual reality. As we all know, there is A LOT of technology out there, and all of it is exciting and cool. But the thing to remember is that exciting and cool need to be in balance with curriculum and pedagogy. Technology allows teachers to engage kids in all sorts of fun ways, but as a teacher, it is important that you make sure you are using the technology to enhance the teaching and learning that is happening in your classroom. One presenter, Steven Anderson, emphasized that we are past the point where we can just check off a "technology use" box. We need to be cognizant of how the technology is being used and if it is a value-add or not.
2. Innovation comes in waves. After the last conference I attended in November, I walked away thinking, "Well, that was fun, but I don't know if I learned anything new." With that thought hanging over me at the beginning of FETC, I picked out sessions on topics that I hoped would present new ideas. To stick with my surfing analogy, a few sessions really took me for a ride. I was excited by a session on augmented reality and the impact it can have on engagement and deeper learning. I also walked away from a session on Classcraft with a refreshed view on gamification. In my thinking on educational technology, I've found there are often periods of time where each tool you find excites you, but also periods of time where you are waiting to find something new, much like a surfer waiting for the next wave. During the lulls, I encourage you to revisit technologies you've found in the past.
3. Both educational innovation and surfing are full of risk. Surfing, like any extreme sport where gravity is the referee, is risky and dangerous. If you make a wrong move, there can be harmful consequences. What we are doing in our move to blended learning is risky. We are looking to take a way of teaching and learning that is functional and comfortable and change it, without really fully knowing what is on the other side. But I would add that this is no different from the risks we ask our students to take every day. The closing keynote speaker and 2014 National Teacher of the Year Sean McComb used an image of white-water rafting to demonstrate this point.
McComb urges all of us to "be in the boat" with our students by taking risks alongside them.
So, with that said, here are some more practical ideas to help you ride the wave!
- Classcraft to gamify your classroom and improve motivation.
- Aurasma as an augmented reality app to improve engagement and bring static images to life.
- Google Tone is a Chrome extension that lets you share links with any device that also has the extension via a musical tone. Think musical QR code.
- Kahoot! is a great class response tool that has been around for a bit. I recently learned about "Ghost Mode" that lets students play against past responses to the same quiz. They can even compete against their past self!
- Kiddle is a safe search engine powered by Google that includes large images with search results. This can be very useful in helping our ELLs do research.
- Skype has a speech to speech translator built in!
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