GaETC Conference

On Wednesday, November 4 I went to the GaETC conference.  I LOVED the keynote speaker Angela Maiers and her #youmatter message.  It really got me thinking about how to make all the children in my class feel important and worth it and I love following her feed on twitter now to get more ideas.  At the conference I attended a session about Genius Hour.  I am still trying to figure out if there is a way I could implement this into my classroom at a second grade level, but I love the concept and idea of letting the kids come up with their own idea or thing they want to learn about and conducting the research and resources independently.  I also attended an App Smashing session.  I can't wait till the 100th day of school so I can use the aging app with the chatter pix app so they can take their picture of themselves "aging" and then record a message and have it look like they are talking!  I also attended a session on where schools will be in 25 years and how schools need to prepare to get there.  It is both scary and exciting to think about how much education, teaching and learning will change over that course of time.  Overall, I enjoyed the conference and came away with some new technology ideas to try.