Teachers from across the New River Valley were rockin’ out at Blacksburg High School this week attending a diverse range of technology-inspired teaching and learning workshops at the New River Valley Teacher Technology Summit (NRVTTS).
The summit was nerdy teacher fun designed to help rock students in the new school year starting very soon.
The summit started with live acoustic guitar music during registration followed by a rock concert atmosphere in the auditorium. Montgomery County Public School (MCPS) Instructional Technology Resource Teachers (ITRT) impersonated Cyndi Lauper, Freddie Mercury and Elvis during a rousing round of Name That Tune, Google style.
Teachers then dispersed to attend “jam sessions” throughout the day.
The NRVTTS offered over 35 workshops to engage students in STEM and enhance lessons with technology.
Each workshop had a unique rock and roll name. Shake, Rattle and Roll Coding with Scratch, Rockin’ It with Desmos, We Will We Will Posterize You, Disco Down into Pear Deck, and Stop Motion Hammertime are examples of professional development available to teachers.
“Rockin’ Around the World” was presented by Alicia McGee, a Blacksburg Middle School teacher.
The forty-five minute workshop had teachers exploring different mapping tools including Google My Maps, Streetview, Tour Creator and Tour Builder.
Teachers exchanged ideas on how tours could be taken of historic places and students’ mapping skills can be enhanced.
McGee said, “These resources can be interactive ways to improve a sense of geography. Mapping can be used across curriculums.”
Erin Bond, a BMS teacher, introduced teachers in her “You Oughta Know” session about Dyknow; a way to streamline digital classroom management and build personalized blocking plans. Teachers can provide supervision perimeters on the Chromebooks that MCPS students use. Lessons using the Chromebooks can help students work towards a goal.
Bond said, “This helps students stay on task.”
In the Pour Some Sugar on Memes and Comics, Katie Larimer, a MCPS ITRT, demonstrated how to use students’ love of memes and cartoons as a way to engage students in learning and reviewing. Catchy and humorous visuals can be used in many ways in the classroom from warm-ups to review of concepts. Teachers were encouraged to create their own memes and cartoons using templates and technology resources to show the ease of helping students to be interactive.
Larimer used Pear Deck, a Google product, to provide the workshop instruction. Pear Deck is another instructional tool useful for teachers to transform static slide presentations into classroom conversations. As a teacher advances the slides, students can be prompted from Chromebooks to answer questions or click on appropriate links.
In the foyer, MCPS Science Administrator Patricia Gaudreau demonstrated a variety of robots available to classrooms. Between workshops, teachers had the opportunity to inspect and play with some programming. All MCPS elementary schools now have access to Bee Bots and Ozobots.
Gaudreau said, “Coding and programming is now a part of the Standards of Learning for elementary school students.”
Virginia Department of Education passed a new Computer Science SOLs for all levels of students. Virginia is the first state in the country to mandate students be taught a detailed understanding of computers, programming process, applications and impact on society.
At end of the day, teachers were ready to change from summer beats to school tunes.
-Lisa Bass