I had a great experience at CUEBC (Computer Using Educators of BC). I had a great facility to teach in (thank you Dave McCristall and Dennis Wong). Terry Fox Secondary in Port Coquitlam offered not only an easy to navigate school, with some pretty interesting workshops to attend.
The keynote speaker David Warlick showed me how today's kids don't have a ceiling (or walls) around their learning anymore - except the ones schools place around them. Ouch! But he has an interesting point. I am on twitter with another educator who has challenged his kids to create examples of 21st centruy learning, but not use camera phones. I think this might be failing to recognize the camera phone for what it could be. I will politely raise this issue with him, and hope he will have a discussion with me.
I also attended David's workshop where he drew the analogy of his own professional learning network as being like a garden. What I took from this very well crafted presentation (although there were a few technical glitches) was the need for me to do some more professional reading - reading more blogs of other teachers. I came away from his workshop thinking that in order to progress in my profession I need to read what other great educators are doing, comment, write more myself and then find some way to share what I am learning.
During an awesome lunch, I did something I had not planned on. I volunteered for a position on the executive. The position involves putting out a newsletter for CUEBC and promoting awareness of CUEBC and the work of it's members, or issuses surrounding technology in education to a broader audience. CUEBC has a twitter account, so I think this is where I will begin. I think this will force me to carve out time to do more professional reading - so I can pass it along.
My second afternoon session was with Orwell Kowalyshyn as he showcased some of the exciting things happening in our province's largest district of Surrey. They have distributed over a thousand iPads to teachers, and he showed some of the apps that teachers were using. My district distributed laptops to almost a quarter of our teachers. I wonder about the differences between putting an iPad into teachers' hands vs. putting a laptop in teachers' hands?
I enjoyed the chance to talk to vendors. None of them pressured me, all just wanted to talk. I thought the demonstration of SMART technologies gave me a lot to think about. How does this SMART table fit into classrooms? How can SMART boards be better used by students and teachers alike, and transform people's teaching styles because it can do things a regular white board cannot? This is a device that the majority of teachers I work with on learning teams are exploring.
It was my fifth trip to CUEBC, and I look forward to going again next year. I hope some of you will join me.
No comments:
Post a Comment