KySTE2012 Review

Even though I had planned to review 12 articles for my IS class, I've decided a full review of my experience at KySTE2012 would be adequately a "review".  I attended KySTE2012 for all personal reasons - I wanted to find the sessions that I could directly benefit from, either as a topic I have ignored for years (such as Kinect in the Classroom...read more later...I think I've rightfully ignored it).  Following will be a recap of the session I attended - my general thoughts on the topic, presenter, and implication for use in the classroom...

Infinite Campus
What can be said dear friends?  It's something we've all learned to love (they did tell us at school in the beginning that we will hate it at first, but love it later, and I have to agree with that).  I enjoyed hearing from the IC representatives - both very knowledgeable about KY's use of the program.  I look forward to seeing some of the enhancements, the apps they are developing for teachers to use, the assignment submission feature, and I was thrilled to hear that the information is encrypted as it is shared from a personal device.  Shew.  I was a bit underwhelmed when I asked rather specific questions about issues I had with IC and it was kind of blown off.  If only IC would be a bit more open to talking to working teachers about their product.  I would honestly say that 95% of my colleagues would never submit a work ticket for something that they find annoying or awkward on IC.  The time I did submit a work ticket, they "fixed" the problem but really made it worse (copying assignments from one section in one school to another sections in another school - why can't I copy to multiple sections at once! And why does the due date never show up?).  In German we call that Schlimmverbessern (better something for the worse).  As the IC Teacher Coach at my school, I felt I should attend.  I did enjoy hearing of the cool new things, but IC, really, let's focus on making better what we already have before rolling out something new. 

Tech PD with Leanna Prater (Fayette County Public Schools)
Having taught many tech professional development sessions for my school, district, and state world language association, I felt it important to attend this session.  Even though I feel that I am a decent tech pd presenter, there's always room for improvement.  I was intriegued by Mrs. Prater's introduction with the true colors test - that 35% of all people at "gold" or "orange", 56% of teachers are "gold", 88% of administrators are "gold", but 63% of our at risk students are "orange".  Problem.  I never thought about people's learning styles much as I planned PD, but I should have!  The essential question "Does PD challenge the way teachers teach, or how students learn?" really caught my eye.  One must always have this in ones head when planning PD!  By using the 5E Model (engage, exploration, explain, extend, and evaluate), I think I can now plan better PDs for teachers.  I also must share Mrs. Prater's last quote, "focus should never be on the tools, but rather the instruction."  This is so true! Thanks Leanna Prater for sharing this!

BYOD (Bring your own devices)
This was offered by a principal and tech resource teacher from Bowling Green City Schools in KY - these guys are great characters and are rather entertaining.  I felt that this session was quite a bit more of a "what great apps and tools can you use" than how to implement a BYOD policy, even though I got a ton of info out of this session!  It does seem that one must have the administrative support and technology support to begin to even do these types of things, but as long as teachers are asking for it, teachers will get it (mainly referred to wifi and bandwidth, pay raises...probably not in this lifetime).

iPad in Classroom
I really enjoyed this session - the ladies (I feel stupid for not remember who they were or where they were from) presented a huge amount of great apps that a teacher can easily use in class to aid instruction.  I was a bit miffed that it seemed to focus on what teachers can use, versus what students can use, but I still learned a lot.  Because not every student has an iPad in our school, I guess I shouldn't have really expected to get too much out of it.  I do, however, really look forward to playing around with ePub to create a book.  Fun stuff.

Create your own app
Now this was a session meant for me - particularly as I am finishing my Independent Study course at Georgetown College (and subsequently my MA with Endorsement in Instructional Technology).  Even though people can build an app from scratch, there seems to be a grown number of websites with templates with which one can create an app.  We did have some tech glitches in the presentation (it was funny to see people drop like flies as the minutes went by to fix the wifi connection for the presenter - I guess some people set a timer for "after X number of minutes of the presenter fiddling with the wifi connection, I WILL LEAVE".  Get over yourself.  I loved the looks of ibuildapp.com and thoroughly look forward to continuing work with it.  This really gave me the jump start I needed to get my app rolling - and gave me some things to think about to.  Thank you app builder lady!

Evernote
Cool app - not sure I'll go paperless, but worth looking at.  The best thing I got from this session was "slide rocket" - the presentation tool the presenters used to present.  Way cool - can't wait to use it soon. Check it out.

Kinect
Waste of time.

Clickers
As I recently have acquired a clicker system, I wanted to attend a session on them.  In my 5 years of teaching, I have successfully avoided using these things, but I think I may be perhaps a bit more willing to use them.  The instant results/formative assessment component was absolutely great.  I wasn't took happy that the session only focused on one style of clickers - but I've got enough ideas and will start using my new system soon.  Stay tuned!

KySTE2012 was a great experience for me - money well spent - I highly recommend to any teacher or administrator (and tech person naturally) to attend this conference - it's obvious that folks in Kentucky care about technology in the classroom - there are many great people out there working to help integrate our new tools in classrooms to keep students engaged.  Way to go KY!

KySTE2012

KySTE Conference 2012 notes coming soon. For complete and blunt reflections, thoughts, and other good things, please check back soon! Progress on my app development independent study is going well, and has been enhanced by attending this conference, and more and more consulting ideas are ready for implementation.