(CMS/GMS) 1:1 Update for week of 10/13

THIS WEEK:
The Teacher Resource Team traveled up to High Point, NJ to attend the High Point New Jersey Summit featuring Google for Education.  There, we attended a variety of informative sessions (Dan Gallagher presented!) and connected with 389 other educators from 53 schools in 4 states, all using GAFE in their schools. You can join the conversation and connect with some of those same educators by searching the hashtag #HPGAFE14 on Twitter.

The rest of this week, we met with individual teachers and teams/departments to support your work in your respective classrooms.  Thank you to all who met with us; these types of conversations are very valuable to our work together in this 1:1 learning initiative.  Keep up the amazing work and sharing your great ideas with one another!

NEXT WEEK:
We've also been planning our upcoming professional development day on 10/23.  As you know, 5th and 6th grade 1:1 teachers will be attending the unconference at Grover and 7th and 8th grade teachers will be attending the unconference at CMS.  You will receive more information about the day early next week.  We know that, for many of you, this will be your first unconference experience. So, here are some basic tips for attending an unconference:

* Unconferences are driven by each person attending – there is no one “in charge”

* All attendees are invited to present or facilitate a session

* Attendees choose the sessions they’d like to attend themselves

* The “rule of mobility” gives attendees the option to leave a session and go to another one if it isn’t quite what they wanted, if there were two sessions they wanted to attend during the same time, etc.

If you'd like to get a better sense of what an unconference is all about, take a look at this video below.

We hope that you will consider leading a session on 10/23.  You don't have to be an expert in the topic -- it can be anything you are trying out in your classroom or something you are interested in learning more about!

We'll also continue visiting classrooms next week at Village School.  These non-evaluative visits are meant to give us the opportunity to showcase and highlight some of the amazing practices already happening, so that we can share them across grade levels, subject areas and buildings.  We are looking to see what the students are doing:  how they are displaying the 21st century competencies and how they are using technology.

REMINDERS:
Please continue to use the ticket system to report technology issues.

For some quick troubleshooting tips, visit this page on our blog. If you don't see the answer to your question, leave a comment at the bottom of the page.

See you at our unconference on 10/23!


Have a great weekend!
~Allan and Melissa