This past weekend two awesome events happened: my school started Spring Break and I spent my time at the Spring CUE conference in Palm Springs, California. At the conclusion of the conference, Jon Corippo asked me a simple question, “What was your biggest take away?” I replied, “The people.”
I feel like I live 3 lives on a daily basis. My family life. My tennis life. My Education life. When I my education life – I refer to New Richmond, Twitter world, EduProtocols. Spring CUE gave me a chance to meet my Twitter/EduProtocol friends in person. The magic of social media made me feel like I have known these people for a long time.
While in California I experienced great conversations, new learning experiences, connecting with others, and visiting other schools. I attended many great sessions at Spring CUE as well.
The People
Here are some awesome people to follow on Twitter:
Dr. Scott Petri (@scottmepetri) – We are co-authors of EduProtocols: Social Studies and talk once or twice a week. Every time I speak with Scott, I learn something new. Sometimes a new piece of research data. Sometimes it’s a new teaching strategy or idea to use in my classes. It was a pleasure to meet Scott in person. I had the honor of visiting John F. Kennedy High School and observing Scott’s interactions with students. He’s. heck of a teach and an even better person!
Jon Corippo (@jcorippo) – From 3,000 mile away, Jon changed my life. The power of social media and technology. Jon is another person that teaches me something new every time we talk. This time I had the pleasure of meeting Jon in person and being a part of one of his live sessions featuring EduProtocols. Despite my extensive use of EduProtocols, I learned two new protocols – the 3x genre protocol and the For the People protocol.
Kim Voge (@kvoge71) – Kim warned me I was getting a hug when I arrived in Palm Springs. As soon as I arrived, the first session I attended was Kim’s session on EduProtocols. Sure enough – I got a hug and a selfie. Through the power of Twitter, I feel like we have known each other for years. She featured Thick Slides, Thin Slides, and Iron Chef. Despite using these items on a regular basis, I took away some new, awesome ideas from the session to implement in class. Oh yeah, Kim’s new book came out – Deploying EduProtocols. It’s a must read for any teacher or administrator. Great ideas for planning or the research behind implementing EduProtocols.
Val Sun (@mllevalsunshine) – Val is another person who I feel like I have known for a long time. Val has great ideas for implementing EduProtocols and uses them with the future teachers she trains with her college class. Plus, she has a book, Navigating Dual Immersion releasing soon! OH yeah, she laughs at my stupid dad jokes too.
Jacob Carr (@mrcarrontheweb) – It was fun meeting Jacob in person. He is the future author of the EduProtocols: Language Arts edition. I thoroughly enjoyed Jacob’s session on implementing EduProtocols at the DOK-1 level. I learned some Dutch with Fast and Curious which was fun. Lastly, I learned about a possible new protocol called the Repuzzler that I’m excited to use when I return from Spring Break next week.
Brianna Davis (@MrsDavisRCHS) – It was great meeting Brianna Davis. I believe I introduced myself in the Hilton parking lot (which was probably creepy, but oh well). Brianna is an avid user of EduProtocols and Social Studies. She also makes some rad templates and lessons for her students. She was awesome to create a template for the Archetype Four Square lesson featured in the EduProtocols: Social Studies edition book!
Diane Mapes (@mrsmapess) – It was great to connect with Diane as she is another avid user of EduProtocols with Social Studies. Look for her great ideas using Great American Race, CyberSandwich, and Thin Slides. It was great meeting Diane for dinner with Jon and Kim the first night of the conference.
Robert Mayfield (@MrMayfieldRHS) – Robert has been rocking the EduProtocols lately with his classes.He’s been using some CyberSandwich, Great American Race, Iron Chef, and Thin Slides. Oh yeah – he even invented a new protocol called Thin Chef (2 pictures and 2 words). Robert is another person I feel like I have known for a while and I look forward to him visiting Cincinnati in June.
Jamie Halsey (@mrsjamiehalsey) – It was great meeting Jamie briefly at the EduProtocols Social Studies session. Then talking more in depth at Shakey’s Pizza. Jamie is an EduProtocols and EMC2Learning expert and does amazing stuff fusing gamification into the protocols. Please, please, please check out her stuff and templates. Oh, and thanks for helping me charge my phone!
Adam Juarez (@techcoachjuarez) – Although briefly, I met Adam Juarez. He has great ideas infusing technology into lessons. It was awesome of him to give me a copy of his book – The Complete EdTech Coach. I can’t wait to dive into this book!
The Sessions
Through EduProtocols and virtually presenting, I have learned the importance of creating a session that is hands on. People learning new ideas actually need to do something to learn how to implement those ideas. From each session, I took notes and tried to take away something positive and something new to use with my classes.
Relationships – One of my favorite sessions was on the importance of building relationships. This session was run by Roni Habib (@Roni_Habib). The session was interactive and he had the participants connecting. I liked his honesty and straight talk in the session. I liked getting to know my partner Justin Berzon throughout the session. Each activity we did took 30 seconds and really had us listening, laughing, and sharing honestly.
EduProtocols – With EduProtocol sessions, I took away some new ideas. The For the People protocol is a great idea to get students working on feedback using a Google Form. I also like the idea of Glows and Grows from Kim Voge. Glows and rows has a nice positive spin for peer to peer feedback.
I can’t wait to use the RePuzzler lesson I learned from Jacob Carr. It’s a great, hands on activity (reminded me of a concept sort) with vocabulary. This lesson can easily be adapted to any subject.
Listenwise – I learned about Listenwise from Dr. Scott Petri. Listenwise is a short podcast site that can be used for any subject. The 6-7 minute podcasts, or news stories, were archived by NPR and can now be used to incorporate with any lesson. They are used to help students work on listening skills and really help students visualize being in the story. Here are 2 other things I learned during this session:
- Students can read 2-3 grade levels above their level as they listen to the reading along with a transcript.
- Students need a working vocabulary of 50,000 or more words by the time they graduate high school.
Keynote – The message of the Keynote from Amanda Sandoval (@historysandoval) was incredible. I loved Amanda’s Group Playlist idea for this crazy time in education. The Group Playlist is a spin on Catlin Tucker’s Station Rotation Playlist idea. What I took away the most, however, were these 4 questions Amanda used to help her design the group playlist:
- What is most important?
- How does this connect to the real world?
- Will this engage students?
- Will they find it meaningful?
These are the questions she developed from students survey answers and the questions used to help design lessons. In this age of Covid, these questions are crucial for any teacher developing lessons.
All in all, this was an awesome conference. Amazing people. Amazing sessions. What an awesome experience!
Moler's Musings 