USM Summer Spark!

I'm back home now and can relax a bit and I spent a week writing this post. I unpacked my bags in minutes, but it will take me a long time (weeks? months?) to unpack the experience. That same invigorating feeling of having been to a smashing good concert or winning a championship is buoying my spirits. I'm PUMPED. I am also tired as heck.

First of all, I'm glad I went. I paid for most of the trip myself and was hoping it would live up to the hype. The hype was well placed. The location was beautiful! I'm happy that the trip gave me the chance to experience the wonderful city of Milwaukee. The University School of Milwaukee is a site to behold. You can tell right away that the entire community takes great pride in the school and its students.

The conference was incredibly well run. Pamela Nosbusch (@pamelanosbusch) and Chuck Taft (@Chucktaft) made Summer Spark run so smoothly. This was their forth year doing Summer Spark and their organizational experience shows. Few things I noticed were: sessions on-time, tech issues few, key-notes superb, session rooms accommodating, and food wonderful. Honestly, it was one of the best run conferences I've been to.

Below is a list of the sessions I attended and main takeaways from each.

Top 10 Games for Any Classroom

-Melissa Pilakowski (@mpilakow)

A great assortment of ideas from Jenga, Scattagories, to a Google Vocab Challenge. I will definitely look at playing a few from this session.

AR and VR in the Classroom

-Rachel Dene Poth (@Rdene915)

I love seeing what new things are on the horizon. Google Expeditions continues to be the leader. Why are so many others on iDevices only? I find much of AR and VR a bit gimmicky still but the engagement level is amazing.

Teaching Inspiration

-Michael Matera (@mrmatera)

Finally got to see a presentation by the #xplap man himself. I'm going to use "time" as a game element in more activities.

Digital Breakouts

-DianaLyn Perkins (@PerkyScience)

Practical session from one of my #scitlap friends. I needed to know where to start and what Digital Breakouts were all about. This session has got me stoked to do one in the fall.

Insert Coin

-Chris Hesselbein (@ChrisHesselbein)

I had visited Chris' blog before and wanted to attend one more gamification session. His passion permeated the session and was a great review/introduction of game mechanics and gamification.

Student Voice in the Classroom: Don't Forget the Introverts

-Julie Smith (@Julnilsmith)

I posted a picture from the first slide of this presentation and my Facebook went nuts. My introvert friends are not introverts on the internet I guess. Good practical strategies for reaching out to introverts: wait time, give students paper to write down questions, provide speaking prompts, and more!

Bite-Size Mastery: Nibbling on Mastery Learning

-Tiffany Ott (@TechieTeachOtt)

I had been seeing Grid Method come across my Twitter feed for while and had a passing knowledge of mastery learning. I was hoping to get some specific pedagogical strategies out of this session. I learned out to plan out an entire lesson for mastery. Love it. She provided a sheet breaking down a standard into DOK levels that go with lessons. A formative assessment at the beginning breaks out students into DOK levels to tackle those tasks.

Shattering The Perfect Teacher Myth

-Aaron Hogan (@aaron_hogan)

Aaron wrote the book with the same name as the title of this session. I managed to snag a copy from him after the session. He went over each of the myths in his book. One thing that stuck with me is the change in thinking from "Students should know how to do this." to "I need to teach students how to do this." This is particularly true for behavior problems in class. The idea that students are trying their best. Not just thinking that they are being lazy.