My toughest day as a teacher

My toughest day as a teacher is today.

It's not my first day of school, we started last week.

It's not a new school, that was last year.

It's not a new content area.

It's my daughter's first day of Kindergarten.

As the sun sets on summer

I'm down to the last few days of summer vacation.

That means I'm cramming in the summer projects I always postpone to the last minute: Costco trips, cleaning out the basement, and starting the 15 blog posts drafts I told myself I'd be writing and publishing all summer long.

I don't lament the end of summer. I'm looking forward to the start of the school year.

School Technology Summit 2015 presentation - NYCSTS15

Welcome to my portion of the School Technology Summit 2015, presented by the Division of Instructional & Information Technology of the New York City Department of Education!

This is the third year for the Tech Summit. My materials from last year can be found here. Just like last year I have created this post for my session slide deck. Once again, the day looks to be an amazing day of learning with a lot of great session opportunities. I am putting all my presentation resources here, in this one post, to make it easy for everyone to have access to my content, even if you are unable to attend in person.

I hope you find my material & presentation valuable...

Life moves pretty fast, especially with wifi

I'm on a bus. Headed from Portland, Maine to Boston. I'm blogging on my iPhone using the bus' WiFi.

It's crazy to think the iPhone is only 8 years old (version 1 was released 6/28/07). That's nuts. Less than a decade ago flip phones, the smaller the better, we're all the rage. Remember Nokia and the Blackberry?

The iPad first came to stores in April of 2010. Just over 5 years ago the world was introduced to what has become a truly landmark and revolutionary device. 

June 2007 the world got the iPhone.

April 2010 the world got the iPad. 

And here I am, July 2015 and I'm blogging on a phone using wifi in a bus doing 70 mph south down the Maine turnpike.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Periscope the school

A few months ago the concept of live-streaming video directly to Twitter hit the market. Meerkat was the first app to launch. It rapidly gained popularity, so Twitter went out and bought its competitor Periscope.

Why does this matter? Because live streaming video of school events is awesome. And not just graduations and PTA meetings, but everyday events. Things like student presentations and project shares are natural fits. If students are practicing presenting their work to an audience, their class, why not also give them some experience presenting live to the world? No, they can't see their Periscope audience, but knowing someone could be watching is a great way to hone presentation sills.

I used it for two main purposes this year:

• Student shares
• Live performances

The Power of the Hashtag - Social Media as an Educational Imperative

I fully believe social media is a new school imperative. Yes, social media in school is absolutely necessary, required, and unavoidable

At various time throughout history schools have taken on new technology imperatives. From the slate to the pencil to the mimeograph to the fax machine. Then computers, email... the eternal stream roller that is progress and innovation.

There have always been the new "must haves."

I'm sure with all of those iterations of educational transition there have been naysayers. People who shunned the pencil. Thought the mimeo was a ridiculous expense. Saw no use for a fax machine. Tried to leave computers unplugged. Even email, in 2015, gets the occasional "I don't use that" response from the occasional staff member (yes, not a joke, last year, 2014, as a New York City Department of Education employee I was told by a colleague to communicate via handwritten notes because he "doesn't do email").

Thank you, #ISTE2015

That's it. It's over. I'm riding the rails outta town. Philly, you've been amazing. Thank you for the hospitality.

 

ISTE? You are my hero.

 

This was my first ISTE experience and it was everything the hype said it would be. I've long been a member of the #notatISTE crowd, but this year I had the good fortune to see it live.

 

Tons of great sessions.

Tons of places to meet and connect.

Great events to unwind and socialize.

Unfathomable amounts of incredible people sharing awesome stories of the amazing things they are doing in schools.

 

My brain hurts. In the best way possible.

 

Thank you, ISTE.

 

Thank you to all the friends I got to see again, and all the new people that are no longer strangers. Thank you Philly for hosting. Thank you all.

 

At some point there will be a longer reflective blog post, or four. But for now I just needed to say thank you.

 

Thank you, ISTE and everyone I had the great fortune to interact with. It was an amazing experience.

 

Posted with Blogsy

The new essential questions...

What drives us? What are those questions we ask ourselves, even if we don't expect a hard and fast answer? Those questions that we seek to answer, hoping the search leads to the embodiment of the question, are the essential questions.

 

Here at #ISTE2015 Angela Maiers posed a question to the twitterverse:

 

#ISTE15 or #ISTE2015 - View both in HootSuite

So many hashtags, so little time. How to keep multiple hashtags manageable on your iPad? HootSuite and a keyword column!

 

Have to give a big hat tip to Alice Keeler, the inspiration for this post.

She recently posted a similar title to her blog, "#ISTE15 or #ISTE2015 - View both in Tweetdeck" and it got me thinking... I'm not bringing a laptop to ISTE so how can I use HootSuite on my iPad to accomplish the same thing Alice describes, two hashtags in a single column stream...?

 

Here's how to do multiple hashtags in a single column on HootSuite for iOS...

 

In anticipation of #ISTE2015

As I begin my journey to Philladelphia my head is swimming. ISTE has long been a conference I've wanted to attend but never could. In the past it always seemed to fall during the last week of school, a week I could never miss. This year it comes immediately as the school year ends.

 

A lot of my students go away to sleep-away summer camp. I never did as a child. The past few weeks I've heard countless tales of the bus rides, the cabins, the friendships, the excitement, tha anticipation. The fun. As ISTE has approached I started to feel much the same way. Eagerly awaiting the moment my train pulls away from Penn Station headed to Philly...