"Learning All the Time; That's Our Jam" - MERIT Days 4-5 Reflection

These past two days have been a flurry of learning, inspiration, and excitement.  Everything at MERIT has been so well presented and accessible that I haven't taken many thorough notes, but I wanted to list a few highlights for my own processing and organization.  (Well-designed blog posts still to come.)

Digital Citizenship
I was interested in Common Sense Media certification and Parent Info Program.

Kas Pereira walked us through some Creative Commons and Fair Use. Still so many rules to figure out and keep in mind, but I thought this Copyright for Education flowchart by Meryl Zeidenberg and Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano was very cool, and eye opening:

Infographics
Rachel Diephouse led us through thinking about designing infographics using Steve McGriff's design instruction.  She had interesting ideas for having students research with nonfiction text sets, then using Piktochart, Glogster, Google Drawing (see Alice Keeler), and/or Google Pages to create their own infographics.

Power of Feedback
We watched an awe-inspiring video Ron Berger "Austin's Butterfly" about the power of feedback for students.  It was a great reminder to give kids multiple opportunities to do better so that they can grow.  This tied in well the next day with Kevin Brookhouser's message (and amazing Autorap song) that "Failure is an option.  Failure to deliver is not."

This idea of feedback also made me want to join forces with Imagine K12.

Try it Out
This morning we were treated to an amazing Meritcon keynote speech by Kevin Brookhouser on creativity and "trying things out," even "bad ideas," and even to Yoda's dismay. He talked about Functional Fixedness, thinking outside the box, and getting our students to participate in audience centered learning via autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  This is what will elevate learning to those higher levels on Bloom's taxonomy. I REALLY want to get a 20% project going in my class next year, especially since we are moving to block schedule and could have the time to not only get into the zone but also get out into the real community.  He also inspired me to leverage technology to outsource menial tasks, like using forms to submit student blog links and data validation to check character count.

Frequent Freak-Outs
Finally, Diane Neebe walked us through three key Mindsets to remember while facing common freak out phrases from colleagues.  They were: "task over tool," "good teaching is good teaching," and "know your audience." Tech pioneers can employ these mantras as responses to many of the most common forms of anxiety some teachers express when overwhelmed with "all the new tech."

In Conclusion
Our week ended today with a hilarious and light-hearted closing keynote from Diane Main about the importance of being a Lifelong Learner.  She had so many nuggets of wisdom, like "the journey is the destination," that our kids need to be working harder than us teachers, and in reference to she and her family, but hopefully true for all of us, "learning all the time; that's our jam."  

I'm still curious about:

• Best ways to protect student privacy while making their work public.  How to find the best balance?
• Nearpod for presentations to student devices and formative assessment
• Remind