VSTE Recap

Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE) hosted their annual edtech conference at the Virginia Beach Convention Center in Virginia Beach December 7-9! I attended as a first timer and presented two sessions, 15 + Tech Tools That You Can Use Next Week and Mystery Location in Action!

One of my favorite things about conferences is connecting with other educators who are doing amazing things in their classroom. I love being surrounded by other educators who are excited about learning from and sharing with others. There is such a buzz and excitement at conferences and VSTE did not disappoint. VSTE had something for everyone, awesome concurrent sessions, engaging workshops, thought-provoking speakers (Steven Anderson, Sylvia Martinez and Rob Furman), model classrooms, exhibitors and even an interactive hackerspace! Kudos to the hard-working VSTE Conference Committee and Board Members for pulling everything together. The conference was well organized and there were lots of little touches that really made this conference stand out. The online scheduling was also so easy to use and reference throughout the conference!

I decided to share a few of my conference experiences using Thinglink, one of my favorite tech tools. Thinglink allows you to make an image interactive! I used the PicCollage app on my phone to create a collage of a few of my favorite photos from the conference which I emailed to myself, saved and uploaded to Thinglink in less than 5 minutes! Then I added captions, links and videos to briefly recap the conference! Click around on the image to interact!

 CLICK HERE to check out my VSTE Thinglink if the touch points are not appearing here! The embedding is being temperamental.

Sunday was the only day I didn't present so it was more low-key for me! I attended a few sessions, met some new friends and volunteered at the registration desk. Since I am obsessed with QR Codes, "What Are you QR-ious" was my favorite session from Sunday! 

Monday started off in the dark literally, I woke up with no power at the Hilton and one thing after another seemed to go wrong! I found Starbucks (hidden inside the Harris Teeter) and a luxurious bathroom at the conference center to quickly plug in my straightener and fix a few flyways (yes, I packed my hair straightener) and those two little things got my day back on the right track. Sylvia Marinez's keynote put a smile on my face and learning about the Makers Movement was really motivating. 

While clicking around and making last minute changes to my conference schedule online I found the "popular" tab and wanted to see if there were any sessions that I had missed or initially skipped over. I was BLOWN AWAY when I realized that my session had made the top 10 and had 158 people signed up to attend. 

I snuck out of the morning keynote a bit early to get set up for my workshop. I arrived at the room to find 10 + people camped out. 

"Filter Wall" by Adam Bellow from AdamBellow on Vimeo.

Of course wifi decided to be difficult and I started the session skipping Adam Bellow's Filter Wall video a #FETC throwback and presenting the first few tools from memory! Luckily a majority of the attendees were able to open my Prezi and handouts and the format worked until Cynthia, a fellow PWCS ITC saved me with her laptop which had great connectivity!

Google Handout

Microsoft Office Handout

Throughout the session I highlighted my favorite edtech tools. I like to share tools that are FREE, easy to use, don't take a lot of time to learn or set up and can be used across grade levels and content areas! My goal for the session was to get everyone involved and using the tools which I think is so important. 

We had a BLAST playing Kahoot and that one seemed to be the favorite tool of the session. If you don't know Kahoot, you must check it out! It is an interactive, game-based, quick response system that is HIGHLY engaging. 

Who doesn't use Google maps? But did you know that you can create your own interactive map! By this time we were running short on time but check out the VSTE attendee Google Map that a few participants added to!

I am hoping to be more active on my blog and plan to dedicate a post to go more in depth on each of the 26 tools that I highlighted during my presentation! 

On Tuesday, I presented Mystery Location in Action which is my newest edtech OBSESSION and definitely deserves and requires several more posts! I will attach my Prezi but stay tuned for MORE information on this interactive geography game! One of the best parts of this session was connecting with Mr. Vesco's 3rd grade class in Kansas for a live call. I could have shared my experiences, photos, videos, kids quotes, teacher's testimonies, etc. but I think the most meaningful thing is participating in a Mystery Location call and seeing what it looks like in action. 

I have so much more to share and much more motivation to blog so be on the lookout but I will leave you with one of my favorite videos from VSTE shared by Steven Anderson and friends, #beAWESOME #bebrave #beMOREdog!

Thinglink

Check out our Mystery Locaction thinglink. Thinglink is a free Web 2.0 tool that allows you to make an image interactive by adding different touch points (using Chrome)! The touch points can be linked to text, YouTube videos, websites, etc. Thinglink is user-friendly and really easy to use! AFTER I made this I realized I should've used a regular US Map because we are coloring the map as we go and this one will stay as is! What do you think about thinglink? How could you use it in your classroom?

Mystery Location

I became intrigued with Mystery Skype about a month ago when I saw the hashtag in my newsfeed on Twitter. I started doing some research and fell in love! I found a lot of awesome resources on Twitter and other tech blogs that I follow and it didn't take long before I was obsessed. 

Mystery Skype which we had to change to Mystery Location because Skype and Google Hangouts are blocked by our district is a great way to connect with other classes around the United States and even the world to practice geography skills. We use our video conferencing program called Webx to travel to different states in the US. 

I've made most of my Mystery Location connections through Twitter and have really seen the power of a PLN come to life. Planning is definitely a big part of getting Mystery Location off of the ground. I've kept everything organized in a Google Drive table that is beautifully color coded.  I also did 3 lessons before our first call to introduce Mystery Location, to come up with questions and to facilitate a practice session.

The 5th grade social studies curriculum in Virginia is entirely geography! They spend all year learning the regions of the US, each state, capital, and everything in between. I knew Mystery Location would be an amazing real world application to put our geography skills to the test! 

Essentially Mystery Location is a big game of Guess Who but rather than trying to figure out a person we are trying to figure out a mystery location by asking yes/no questions! Our goal is to figure out their state and sometimes we even go down to the city! Everyone has a job and is fully engaged throughout the call. 

We begin the call with Greeters who introduce our class and welcome the guest class. Then we play Rock, Paper, Scissors with the other class to see who gets to ask the first question. The Inquirers are responsible for asking questions and we created a list of questions in Google Drive that they use to go from (i.e. Does you start border another country? Does your state border the Atlantic Ocean? Is your state in the X time zone? Is your state in the X region? etc.) The State Experts are responsible for answering the questions that the other class asks of our state! The Data Collectors are responsible for keeping track the clues and the questions that we ask of the other class using Google Forms. This information goes to the Think Tank. The Think Tank is responsible for using the clues to try to narrow down their location and suggestion questions to the Inquirers. The Runners get information from one group to another because we need to keep the class pretty quiet so we can hear what is going on. There are Map Trackers and Geographers who are in charge of narrowing down the location using wall maps and Google Maps/Earth. The back channelers chat with the guest class on TodaysMeet to help with clues. After the greeter finishes their introduction they are in charge of writing the clues on chart paper. We also have photographers, videographers and reporters to be sure we capture the whole event! The closers finish up the call by thanking the other class and sharing some facts about our school and state. We also like to ask questions about the other school and state! 

So far we have connected with 11 different classes in 8 states and we have over 35 Mystery Location calls scheduled in 29 of the 50 states :)! We've had so much fun, learned a TON already, and hope to hit all 50 states before the end of the year!

In addition to an awesome way to practice geography skills we've also integrated writing on our Weebly Mystery Location blog and I am going to come up with some integrated math lessons including measurement, elapsed time, etc.