End of the Year Tech PD Iron Chef Style

A twenty-five minute tech "moment" this spring led to some harsh self reflection.  I was dissatisfied with the PD session and disappointed with myself.  Nothing went horribly wrong. The delivery was just entirely "sit and get".  I made time to sit in a quiet room and really think about what I could do differently within the timeframe.  I wanted to construct something that was hands-on and focused on instruction.  I felt the need to challenge all participants (eager and hesitant) to think and get creative.  Out of all this self imposed agony came a PD activity that is a little Iron Chef, a little TPACK, and  wholly hands-on.  I call it Iron Chef Technology.

 Iron Chef Technology challenges participants to create a plan for addressing a given instructional strategy using at least one low tech tool and one high tech tool.   I purchased take out boxes from a local craft store and stuffed a card with directions, a card with a list of tech tools, and one randomly selected card with a low tech tool in each box. I used Google Slides to make the cards and added several slides with various instructional strategies to give myself lots of choices for what to reveal as the featured ingredient.  I thought if things went well there would be value in repeating this activity featuring a different instructional strategy each time.

Thanks to scheduling conflicts I found myself up to present during the end of school year madness that comes with testing followed by still more testing.  The timing was perfect to feature review as the instructional strategy to be addressed.

Iron Chef Technology was a success!  Several participants tracked me down to share how beneficial they found the activity.  One teacher even emailed to share how she implemented the plan she made during the session.  She included a link to the review game she made from the clue cards students created with the motivational posters tool on Big Huge Labs.

Teen Tech Week 2016

This year's Teen Tech Week (TTW) theme was "Create it at your library!"  Once again the two media specialists I work with, Kathy Johnson and Kay LeRoy, shared my enthusiasm.  After mulling over the theme we decided that TTW was the perfect opportunity to try out our first official makerspace.  Cost constraints were a factor so we created stations on a shoestring budget and used an existing set of iPads.

2016 TTW Materials List

Students visited our makerspace with their course alignment (30 minute study hall) classes.  Each table housed a station.  Students were allowed to go to the station of their choice as long as there was room at the table.  Student feedback was incredibly positive!  So many asked if we could do it again and several said they wished we could "do this all the time".

Hour of Code Reflections

Each year I co-sponsor Hour of Code events with two fabulous high school media specialists, Kathy Johnson (Greenwood High School) and Kay LeRoy (Emerald High School).  We reach out to teachers of course alignment (study period) and AVID elective.  We briefly explain the intent of Hour of Code, where information can be found about the computer science courses our school district offers, and then get students coding with an activity recommended by Code.org.  Course alignment classes are a mixed bag of ability levels and only last 30 minutes so we do our best to get students interested and share how they can get back to the activity so that they complete the hour on their own.  This year we embedded a Nearpod homework session on the media center website.  (Per usual I found a typo after the fact.)

Thanks to the support given by these two media specialists I was able to broaden my reach.  I co-sponsored our first ever Hour of Code competition with Ted Jenks.  He provided his Intro to Computer Science students with a real world Java coding challenge and I provided gift cards to the winning team.  Watching this in progress felt like standing in a control center.  The lab was a hive of activity with calls for polls and feedback.  I was actually worried about the winning team.  While everyone else was frantically typing they seemed to be sitting back and studying the directions.  Then all of sudden they were done long before anyone else.

I also reached out to the programming teacher (Sandra Best) at our county's technology center and the PLTW teachers at the technology center (Charles Johnson) and Emerald High School (Josh Buchanan).  I challenged them to complete CodeCombat.com's free Python course.  The students especially enjoyed the campaign and multi-player modes they were allowed to explore after completing the course.  A few students chose to explore Code.org/learn instead and managed to complete another Hour of Code activity!

I look forward to Hour of Code every year.  It is fascinating to see which students excel and watch other students try to readjust their whole way of thinking and processing.  There are no hard and fast rules about who will do well, but it is incredible to see some students who aren't "good at school" lean over and help peers who attend honors courses.  It is this spirit of cooperation and collaboration that makes my educator's heart glow.  Listening to students "talk code" and work together brings a smile to my face every time.