Friday, March 6, 2015

ICE 2015

I’m back from my annual trek to the ICE Conference. Last week, I attended the Thursday and Friday general sessions portion of the four-day Illinois Computing Educators Conference in St. Charles. Six other teachers from ESH also attended either the general sessions and/or pre-conference workshops.

It’s always great to attend ICE whether I’m seeking inspiration, ideas to bring back to share and adapt, or just to reaffirm what we’re already doing. ICE provides many opportunities to see what other educators and students are doing with technology. There are always plenty of offerings and I always feel like I come back with something to try.

This year’s conference theme, Make the Difference, was literal in the sense that a keynote and numerous sessions were devoted to MakerSpaces and the idea of students “making” in schools and classrooms. For the past few months, I’ve been tinkering and making with some students during their “free choice” time here at ESH and it’s been a great experience. It’s provided another opportunity for students to be creative, hands-on problem solvers as we take apart, explore, design, and build. We’ve been making some very cool contraptions! More on that in another post. I attended several MakerSpace sessions by Sylvia Martinez who is a major figure in the Maker Movement. Takeaways included rethinking schedules, staff roles, subjects, assessment, building a better design prompt, and making connections to Reggio, Montessori, and Design Thinking. I’ve heard her speak at other conferences and I still always come away with something new or a new twist on something.

I’ve been coding with students here at ESH and I’ve introduced some first graders to Scratch Jr. and second graders to Scratch. I took the opportunity to attend a session on coding as I’ve been working on ways to incorporate it into the curriculum. Coding, as with tinkering and making, provides students with the opportunity to be creative, hands-on designers and problem solvers.

I attended an interesting session called Ed Tech Chopped which was based on the Food Network’s show, Chopped. We were split up into groups of 5-6, given a pantry of technology “ingredients” and a list of criteria. Our task was to design/create an activity, lesson plan, or unit and “plate” it up in 40 minutes while meeting the criteria. It was challenging in that each member brought their own expertise to the table so to speak. With a little adaption, I’m looking forward to trying it out as a professional development session with teachers here at ESH.

Another interesting session was with Reshan Richards, creator of the Explain Everything app, about using technology to animate understanding. The session demonstrated how students can use a combination of open-ended media creation apps to visually display their understanding. This is something we’ve been working toward with students and teachers for a while now and reaffirmed what we’re already doing and trying to do. However, my takeaway from it was the concept of students creating their own vs. using existing content to create or demonstrate new knowledge. It prompted me to ask, How can we use and combine created and/or existing images, video, or audio, to spark ideas, to get students thinking, and asking questions? How can and does each student’s personal perspective and experience impact learning and motivation?

A session I attended that relates to the previous question was on designing brain-friendly learning spaces. The session focused on considering classroom layout and how your classroom would be experienced by students. Some things to consider, are there are spaces for students to work in groups, pairs and/or independently? Do our students have easy access to materials with a “less is more” feeling. Do we have too much stimuli to distract the students from the materials on the tables to the amount and way we display information on the walls. Do we strive for a “minimalist” classroom? How is technology embedded into our day to make the curriculum more accessible to the variety of students in our classrooms. As she spoke, it had me thinking, how do we design an authentic and student-centered learning space that creatively inspires students? It prompted me to make connections between the session and the concepts of Universal Design for Learning.

Other sessions on preparing teachers and administrators to meet the needs of future learners, Teacher Revolution, and Digging Deeper into Persuasive Writing were thought provoking and provided some good ideas as well.

Overall, it was a great conference and I highly recommend that you attend next year. One of the best parts of the conference was the impromptu discussion I had with some of my colleagues Friday afternoon after the last session. We discussed our conference experiences, ideas we were excited to explore when we got back to school, and technology use here at ESH. It is these types of discussions that form connections between people and the ideas that can lead to positive change for our students. We hope to continue having these types of discussions now that we are back to work. We hope you’ll join us.