I hope everyone had an excellent summer! My vacation was
full of amazing learning adventures, and I cannot wait to share all the new information,
tools, and project ideas with everyone!
 |
| At ISTE17! |
 |
| ALL THE |
 |
| THINGS I NEVER |
 |
| KNEW I HAD TO HAVE |
I started off the summer at
ISTE17 – the International
Society for Technology in Education conference in San Antonio at the end of
June. It is impossible to do justice to this experience! It was like technology
teacher Mardi Gras/ Christmas/ the State Fair and everyone’s birthday all at
the same time. Every device, program, or platform you have ever heard of (and a
large number of marvelous products I had never heard of) were all on display.
There were four solid days of workshops, breakout sessions, keynote addresses,
technology playgrounds, and product demonstrations. There were actually more
days, but by the end I was glad hadn’t done more as my mind was so overwhelmed
I thought it might be permanently melted!
 |
| Maker Hero Colleen Graves! |
 |
| Block-based programming progenitor Mitch Resnick! |
 |
| Learning Through Projects and Play! |
It is very difficult to select highlights from an experience
that was non-stop amazing, but I did get to meet one of my Maker Heroes,
Colleen Graves – her books gave me the confidence to launch our Piney
Point MakerSpace! It was really
fantastic to meet Willa and Karen of the
Scratch Ed Team at Harvard face-to-face. The
students were so proud to see their work in the profile Willa wrote on our use
of Scratch in the STEM lab (If you missed it, read it
HERE). Another thrill was attending a workshops with Mitch Resnick from the
Lifelong Kindergarten Group in the
MIT Media Lab with projects from the
Tinkering Studio at the
Exploratorium. I also had a mini-reunion with some of my
Raspberry Picademy
class while presenting some student projects at the Raspberry Pi Jam.
However, the celebrity I met that will most impress our
Panthers was Moby from
BrainPOP! I attended the BrainPOP Educators workshop and
completed the requirements to become a BrainPOP Certified Educator. Not only do
I have a lovely new shirt, but also a fantastic set of new BrainPOP tools and
activities that will make students love BrainPOP even more!
 |
| My personal friend, Moby! |
If you cannot tell, I am very excited about 2017-18 in the
STEM Lab! Fasten your seatbelts, students! It is going to be a wild and
wonderful ride!
