My MACUL 2015 Experience

I had the great fortune to attend MACUL 2015 this year in Detroit. Even greater my district sent a lot of teachers to the event, put us up in a hotel with the expectation that we come back and share with the rest of our staff what we've learned. It's been a few weeks since I attended (what happens when I where many hats) so here is my take away. (Spoiler: Super inspiring)

The opening keynote was George Couros an administrator from Parkland School Division. I feel like if there are teachers you want your child to have, he is the administrator that teachers want to work for with. He presented on collaboration and reminded everyone that while it is true that MACUL is a technology conference, we are really there because great educators look for ways to connect with other teachers in addition to connecting with students. Technology should be about finding ways of giving students a voice in their education. I've seen Mr. Couros speak a few times now and every time I leave inspired to make the next (hopefully better) version of my teacher self.

Sessions

The number of sessions was (again) overwhelming (in a good way). They created an app that had a great calender part to it so you could select the things you were interested in, and when the time came, select what was interesting to you. Honestly, one should have had a great conference. With so much to do, if you didn't like something you could move on to your next choice.

I ended up with a hodge-podge of sessions that ranged from digital notetaking, to an R&D lab class. These were both about how to give students choice. How to take notes with tech (verbally, written, drawing, video) and how to find your tech passion (the R&D class blew my mind. It was an everyday class where students get to choose their own research projects).

I also attended a session on how to enhance professional development using Google Classroom to give teachers, you guessed it, choice in their learning. I LOVED the presenters attitude about PD. If we want teachers to do things in a different way, we need to model that difference.

Connecting

During breaks, I would often meet up with my #chataps partner-in-crime JZ or my Allegan TechCamp friend and co-worker KS and we'd talk about ways to implement what we were seeing back in Allegan, on Twitter, in our own classrooms. I am so thankful that I have such amazing teachers to work with on a regular basis in Allegan.

What's next?

What isn't next? Seriously, we have so many options. My personal goals are to start digital note taking and eventually have group notes per unit for students to collaborate on.  I also want to incorporate more skill checking software into my classroom. Encourage it's use and to then create assessments that gauge if students were able to learn the material. I want students reading and writing about math, so I need to find some quality sources of up-to-date accessible math writing for them to read and model their own writing. I want to present at MACUL 16. I want to get published in NCTMs Mathematics Teacher. Maybe try to get a presentation slot at MCTM as well. I think that I work well with my fellow teachers, it's time that I revisit collaboration with others beyond the walls of APS.

My Tweets at MACUL (all Tweets can be found at #macul15)