Ask anyone who had the opportunity to attend the two-day Summer Conference of The Martin Institute at Presbyterian Day School in Memphis, TN, and I am sure they will tell you that it was one of the best educational conferences that they have ever attended. The Martin family, Mr. Lee Burns and the entire faculty and staff of PDS, The University of Memphis and certainly Dr. Clif Mims and Mrs. Laura Dearman are all to be commended for truly meeting their goal of putting together two days of world class professional development for area teachers and administrators.
Mr. Lee Burns, Headmaster of PDS set the tone for the conference in his opening keynote when he quoted hockey great, Wayne Gretzky who said, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” As educators we must be forward thinking in our efforts to provide the best 21st Century education that we can for our students. Governor Bill Haslam spoke at the mid-day keynote on Wednesday and surprised the attendees with a refreshing admission that he and other politicians do not have good answers for every question facing schools, but that steps that have been made are a good start that can be improved upon as time goes by. What better way to top off an exciting first day of the conference than an informative and entertaining presentation from none other than Bill Nye The Science Guy in which he encouraged us to inspire our students to “CHANGE THE WORLD!”
Day two of the conference continued with more wonderful sessions including a student panel which my daughter, Bailey was a part of. During this session students fielded questions about what their opinions were of their educational experiences. Eye opening for many of the teachers and administrators in attendance I’m sure. There were also lots of break-out sessions from talented educators sharing their expertise in a number of areas. One highlight for me was a presentation entitled Leadership by Design facilitated by Sandy McCommon, Director of Education for the Kroc Center of Memphis. Mr. McCommon encouraged us to: lead by example, shape the future, enable change, develop people and encourage others as we try to become strong leaders in our schools. I was also intrigued by the work being done at The Bishop Dunne Catholic School in Dallas, TX. They have a program in which only 15% of their classrooms continue to use paper textbooks. Students bring their own devices in order to access E books and other online materials required for classes. Talk about skating to where the puck is going to be!
And what better way to end the conference than with an inspiring keynote from Tom Barrett, outstanding educator from Nottingham, England! A very telling moment in Tom’s presentation came when he quoted five year old son, George as saying, “Google is everything, Dad!” With that being the opinion of our children, how are we as educators going to use that knowledge to shape the education of those children, and how will we prepare ourselves to meet their needs? I hope that I, for one can use my vision that has been sharpened by this conference to see where the puck is headed and to skate there as hard as I can.
Okay, so I’ve warned you that not everything posted here will be about teaching or technology and this is going to be one of those posts. In fact the only connection that I can make between this post and teaching or technology is that this stems from a conversation that I had with a teacher the other night after leaving a technology conference headed to go eat supper. I have to give credit to my friend and colleague Lisa Martin. This is really her idea, but it was too good not to share.
We have decided that we should open a chain of restaurants with a name chosen from the following list:
I Don’t Care
It Doesn’t Matter to Me
Wherever You Want to Go
We figure that this will be the most successful chain of restaurants ever created since these are the answers you get anytime you ever ask a group of people the question, “Where do you want to eat?” Now there will be a choice that fits the answer!
I learned a little about Voki this week at the Martin Institute Spring Conference and thought I would give it a try. I decided to create a Welcome to Our Brand New Website for Byhalia Elementary where I am the Assistant Principal. It’s not up on the site yet, because I really am not sure how to add it so I’ve sent the code to the tech support folks who built the site for us. Hopefully they will have it up soon, but you can watch it here and tell me what you think of it if you want. Please be nice though since it’s my first attempt.
Even with the threat of winter weather day two of the Martin Institute Spring Conference went on as planned. I began my day in a session called The Educator’s PLN presented by Cathy Kyle, Kelli Anderson, Cindy Brock, and Melissa Smith from Presbyterian Day School. What a great session for introducing educators to the benefits of using a PLN.
This afternoon I am attending Creating a Culture of Thinking in Elementary presented by Susan Droke, Sarah Haygood, Beth Diaz, Sherry Creasman and Windy May. As educators we should all believe that learning is a consequence of thinking. In this session teachers and administrators share strategies for creating thinking classrooms.
I hope you were able to attend the conference as well, but just in case you didn’t you can get all the workshop presentations at the Martin Institute wiki.
Today I am attending the Martin Institute Spring Conference at Presbyterian Day School in Memphis, TN. The Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence provides world-class professional development for public and private school teachers. Participants are teachers and administrators who are eager to develop classrooms centered on critical and creative thinking, collaboration, and brain-based research. The Institute provides workshops and seminars, three annual conferences; a teacher residency program; and funding for off-site professional development, especially at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
My first session today is Cooperative Learning Not Just Group Work with Dr. Mary Ransdell from the University of Memphis. Obviously from the title the topic was cooperative learning, and during this session we participated in several very engaging activities that we could take back to our home schools. One of the most important things that I felt was brought out in the presentation was the need for students to engage in Group Processing during and following those types of activities. This procedure allows the students to tell the teacher how well the groups worked together or to report any problems. The teacher might orally discuss the completed cooperative activity with the students, or ask for information in a written format. Allowing students to write their comments permits confidentiality. Teachers might use information gained from group processing when forming groups for future projects, grading, or to address deficiencies in acceptable social skill demonstration. I certainly feel that paying more attention to this aspect of cooperative learning would make these activities much more effective and rich.
My afternoon session was iTunes in the Classroom presented by Beth Lockhart from the Tipton County school district. She suggested that iTunes can be used in the classroom in a number of ways including as a resource, as motivation, to help create the atmosphere that you desire. The latter part of the presentation was conducted by an amazing young man by the name of Devin Snipes. Devin is an eleventh grader at Fairley High School, and he is the author of four apps available for iPhone and iPad one of which was the number one entertainment app for two weeks last December. He’s so much smarter than most of the educators in the room, including this one!
An overall great day! I look forward to more great sessions tomorrow!
I am sitting in my office this morning anticipating what is usually one of my favorite days of the year in my school district. Today all the teachers and administrators from all across the district will gather at our largest high school for the big kick-off meeting of the year.
Today is great because everyone is still excited about the new year!
The possibilities are still endless!
Everyone will arrive this morning dressed in their new “school clothes”, and ready to set the world on fire!
There will be a dynamic speaker who will do a great job of motivating all of us even further to do the best job we’ve ever done for the students in our schools.
But soon Thursday will arrive along with students and parents, and then the challenge begins.
Wouldn’t it be an amazing year if everyone could hold on to the motivation and excitement that we all feel today?
Celebrate What\'s Right With The World!
I ran across this video, and I’m thinking about using it as a motivator for our first day of school. I just think that we sometimes need to be reminded that although there are a lot of problems to overcome, there is still a lot of potential in every child and every school.
I just got back yesterday from the 2010 version of the Mississippi Educational Computing Association conference.
I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the three days that I spent there.
Most of the sessions that I attended were very well done. The presenters were very knowledgeable about the topics they chose to share.
Dr. Tim Tyson did a good job with his keynote on Tuesday morning.
The MECA board should be commended for the great job that they did in organizing this event!
I would especially like to say that the facility was awesome! The Jackson Convention Center Complex was the perfect location for this event. The meeting rooms were comfortable. The equipment worked well. There was plenty of space for attendees and vendors. THERE WAS FREE Wi-Fi!!! All the things that were wrong with last year’s conference were fixed.
The only thing that I wonder is, Where was everyone? It seemed that attendance was down considerably. I don’t know maybe it was just a result of us not being so crowded in some hotel.
Oh well, if you weren’t there you missed a great opportunity to connect with some wonderful educators!
Had a wonderful opportunity to present at the 2010 MECA Conference. I chose to tell those who were interested about the professional development that has been going on at Byhalia as a part of the BUILD Institute with Dr. Clif Mims. The session was well attended and I received positive feedback from many of the attendees. Below is a link to the Keynote presentation that I used with all the links. The video had to be removed in order to upload, but I will upload it seperately tomorrow to TeacherTube and embed it in this post at that time.
