IT Summit 2015

I had the great pleasure of being a committee member and presenter at IT Summit 2015. The following is a repost from Joanna Saunders. We appreciate her live blogging of our final Ignite session.

IT Summit 2015 Ignite Session

Rules of the presentation: Each speaker gets 15 slides shown for 15 seconds each on an automatic rotation for a total of five minutes of fame to share the newest, latest and greatest technology in this fast paced event.

Presenters: Vicki Davis, Jim Swan, Dean Shareski, Carlene Walter
Ideas shared during the session:

Dean's message: Creativity

• Bad selfies and silly pictures = creativity come from being silly 
• We live in a remix culture where we play with images to make powerful products 
• Creativity can make us create powerful things such as posting where earthquakes happen on Twitter. 
• Teachers work with scraps that others would throw out and then work with students to create something beautiful
• "Adults need to have fun so that children will want to grow up."

Carlene's message: Digital Fluency - our students need a toolkit to help them work and play

Comprehend

• Rewordify 
• Newsela 
• Photomath 
• Sask History Online 

 Formative Assessment

• Plickers 
• Kahoot 

 Collaborate

• Buncee 
• EasilyDo 

Communicate

• Adobe Photoshop Express  
• Canva 

Create

• Adobe Slate  
• Hyperlapse  
• Adobe Voice  
• Snapguide  
• Shadow Puppets 

Jim's Message: 10 year report card on technology

• Piloting social media 
• Teachers are important and they just use the tech to teach 
• Why isn't every day Friday? 
• How do we personalize learning? 
•  Using tech to re-watch a lesson 
• Students want to direct their own learning 
• The new tech alphabet 
• Learning needs to be = personalized, learner-driven, applied, cost-effective 

Vicky's Message: Choose Your Habits, Change Your Life

•  40% don't change habit 
• Choose your habits
•  Manage your time and how you spend it 
• How will you spend your habits? 
• Most people don't know what their ideal work looks like 
• Create launch routines - 30-30 app to help make important things happen routinely
• Miracle Morning Pavers - start my day right 
• Mud Puddle Principle - can share your habits 
• Habit Stacking - add a habit that you already have 
• 20 second rule - more likely to do it 
• Keep calms and make your bed 
• Every 90 minutes you need to move 
• What you do during your break - take a mental break 
• Set alarms - a personal attitude check twice a day 
• Exercise - every little bit helps
• Joy Journal - you will be happier if you write down every day something you are joyful about
• Signature Strength - you will be happier if you use it every day 
• Reading/learning Habit - read in the field that you want to be the best at 
• Get Rid of Gossip - makes you poor and makes you worse
•  Watch less TV 
• You don't accidentally climb Mt. Everest - you choose to

IT Summit Reflections

These are uncertain times for educators in Saskatchewan. We are asking for stakeholders to value our contributions to teaching. IT Summit keynote speakers, Dean Shareski and Dr. Michael Wesch, ask us to value our students.

Neil Postman asked us to consider, why in a world punctuated by media, we have conversations marked with incompetence, irrelevance, and interruptions, in which we plan to do nothing to remedy the social situation. Why are many of students disengaged and fragmented?

Dr. Wesch spoke of the occurrence of a cultural inversion. We value community, but express interdependence. We value relationships, but express individuality. We value authenticity, but express superficiality.

However, there is something in the air. Literally, there is. Technological usage fosters the creation and publication of digital artifacts and varied communication formats. But it is deeper than that. Technology affords deeper connections, collegiality, and collaboration. It allows opportunities to students to engage and participate in the learning.

How do we change the message? How do we get to the deeper phases of knowing? How do we ignite passion? Let's get real, relevant, and harness synergistic collaboration. It is then that we value students.

Disruptive Thoughts @ IT Summit

The IT Summit/SSLA Joint Conference was held March 23-24, 2009 in Saskatoon. As a member of the IT Summit Conference Committee and President-Elect of the SSLA Executive, I was interested in how we can harness collective intelligence to form collegial partnerships.

David Warlick, author of the 2¢ Worth blog, in his keynote addressed literacy and its need for redefinition to address our changing information landscape and its effect upon the 3Rs. Warlick defined contemporary literacy as:

• Exposing what’s true
• Employing the information
• Expressing the ideas compellingly
• …Within an Ethical context

Warlick ended the keynote by stating "Redefine literacy, so that it reflects today’s information environment and integrate that".

Dean Shareski, in his session on Disruptive Technologies, further exemplified how today's learning environment is constantly changing and we need to prepare students not for the Industrial Age of long ago, but as a critical thinker of an unknown future. Shareski identified "disruptions" that could transform the classroom:

• Smart Phones
• Low Cost Computing
• Cloud Computing
• Live Streaming
• Microblogging (Love my Twitter!)
• Interactive Immersive Learning Environments (Love my Second Life!)

and three "disruptions" related to pedagogy:

• Privacy and Digital Footprint (including AUPs that let students communicate!)
• Shift of Time and Space (24/7 classroom)
• Open Space (Check out Academic Earth)
• Outsourced Information (Gain info from a global audience, but creativity cannot be outsourced to Bangalore!)

David Warlick and Dean Shareski both challenged us not only to look into the future, but to examine our practices today. Are we focusing our efforts on integrating technology, or integrating literacy? Are we placing barriers of time, space, and distance on learning? Are we preparing our students to use digital content, or how to use paper? Are we teaching our students to prosper in a future we cannot clearly describe?