November 9th, 2015

Session Descriptions

Sharing is Caring: 30 apps in 30 minutes

Teachers will be encouraged to share their favorite app that assists them and/or enhances their students learning inside and outside the classroom! Teachers will have a bank of apps that will be directly shared with them following the PD session that they can reference any time throughout the year!! If you are looking to collaborate and share ideas across departments and disciplines, this is the session for you!

Agenda

Charlie Trovato

HS Math Educator

1:1 Feedback & Discussion

Do you have concerns over filtering, screen-time, digital citizenship? The this session is for you as we have been in a 1:1 environment for over 1 year. Please come to this session with questions, comments, concerns, etc so that we can help better serve you, your students and learning.  

Chris Trickett

Technology Director

Virtual/Blended Course Development

Need time and support to dive deeper into creating a blended course/unit, or building / enhancing your virtual course, then come to this session!

Joel Dries

Driver's Education Educator

Pete Rinella

HS Health & PE Educators

Performance Tasks

Performance tasks can be a strong addition to your assessment portfolio for your students.  This session will provide a foundational understanding of performance assessments, evaluate sample performance tasks and devote time for teachers to create their own assessment to try out with students.

Mike Dillon

Science Supervisor

Effective Feedback in the Digital Age

Learn how to give feedback through various tools built into Google Docs and Add-ons. Feedback tools will include commenting in Google Docs, Kaizena (voice commenting), screencasting, dynamic rubrics, etc. Teachers will then be able to create and work on establishing ways to provide meaningful feedback to their students.

Agenda

Matt Derr

WH Discovery Educator

Working on Site w/ Google Sites

This session will support time to work and improve a teacher's Google Site to improve the transparency in the classroom. For example, leveraging tools like Google Classroom and Google Calendar can make a streamlined and simple approach to communicating with parents through a Google Site.

Rachel Davies

Instructional Technology Coach

YouTube in the Classroom

Learn how to utilize YouTube and find applications for your classroom, that can allow you to utilize YouTube in the classroom more effectively. Develop playlists that can be easily shared with your students to support the content in your curriculum and learn more about how your YouTube channel can support and enhance your work with your students.

Agenda

Mike Creed

HS Discovery Educator

Digital Workflow w/ gClassroom

Come learn and get your hands-on Google's first educationally focused tool "Google Classroom". Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease. Google Classroom helps students organize their work, complete, turnin, and communicate directly with their teachers and peers concerning their classroom work. Come see how Classroom help you save time, keep classes organized, and improve communication with students.

Agenda

Dana Rosenberger

SR Discovery Educator

Sue Wojciechowski

SL Discovery Educator

Using Skyward more effectively

In this session you will learn more about the functionality built into our student information system to help you automate task and reduce your time working with student grade and progress reporting.

Agenda

Rick Lapi

Instructional Technology Coach

Google Certified Trainer

Going the wrong way? Effectively working in Google Drive.

Get a chance to organize your Google Drive and learn some features that allow navigating and finding things easier.

Mike Creed

GV Discovery Educator

Integrating Formative Assessment in the Classroom

How can digital tools change formative assessment? In this session you will explore a variety of digital formative assessment tools from the lens of both the teacher and the student. How can different tools make formative assessment more engaging to students? How do they allow us to differentiate our instruction? Not only will you experience many of these tools first-hand, you’ll also have time to begin developing an assessment of your own in this session. Allowing for real-time instructional shifts to personalize instruction. This session is differentiated for both tablet and chromebook classrooms.

Agenda

Sara Bowers

CT Discovery Educator

Google Certified Trainer

Becoming a Google Certified Educator

You’ve spent the time growing your skills, now get certified to be recognized for the work you've done. Google offers two educator certifications so that you can show mastery at the level that’s right for you. Use the content in the training center and your own teaching experience to best prepare you for the performance-based exams. Once you feel adequately prepared, exams are available online and the educator certifications can be achieved at any time. Not only does the online course materials prepare you for certification and helps you learn the tools more deeply, but there are also reflections and ideas shared from teachers around the world in the courses too!

Link

Self-Paced

Hangin' out & gettin' it done!

This session will show how Google Hangouts can be an quick and effective tool to work with your closest co-workers. Utilizing the floating chat app and instance video conferencing, experience how to redefine how you work collaboratively with others and have your students collaborate on the spot. Along with Hangouts, other monster tips and tricks will be shared to transform they way you work with others and how to have your students learn beyond the classroom walls.

Agenda

Sara Bowers

CT Discovery Educator

Google Certified Trainer

Inquiry 101

This session will provide a foundational understanding of inquiry as an instructional focus and practice. Participants in this session will review the Essential Features of Inquiry, Indicators of Inquiry Development, evaluate a sample unit, and then walk through how to improve the sample unit in an inquiry model.

Dean Damiani

HS Asst. Principal

Are your students on Target? Learn more about Learning Targets

Learning Targets differ from instructional objectives in both design and purpose. Learning targets guide learning in language that students understand in lesson-sized chunks of information, skills and reasoning processes. Take a deeper look and Learning Targets and how you can construct them in a more meaningful, student centered way.

Agenda

Matt Campbell

HS Science Educator

Mike Dillon

Science Supervisor

Becoming a gScholar - managing student devices

In a 1-1 environment, tools such as gScholar allow teachers to efficiently manage student devices. This session will focus on setting up and using gScholar to interact with students in real time.

Agenda

Rachel Davies

Instructional Technology Coach

Social Media Superstar

Utilizing social media well in the classroom can be engaging for students, parents and the community. Using social media outside the classroom can be fun to stay connected socially, and an important avenue to learn innovative teaching methods. However, there are many sides to social media and as an educator learning the “Musts” and “Must-Nots” on Social Media is essential in our hyper- connected world.

Agenda

Chris McCaffrey

Instructional Technology Specialist

Google Certified Trainer

Tablets for the Physical Education Teacher**

For Physical Education teachers to learn more about the Nexus 7 2013 Model and how it can be incorporated into PE. Issues will be addressed that have come up from using the 2012 Nexus 7 Model.

Agenda

Rick Lapi

Instructional Technology Coach

Google Certified Trainer

Google Drawings in the Classroom

At first glance, it can be easy to ignore the Google Drawing app. It does seem rather simplistic and not very useful. However, it is actually a powerful image creator and editor. Add in the fact that you can collaborate on a drawing, and it's too awesome to be ignored. This session will focus on many different ways to use Google Drawings in the classroom. From creating a timeline, to an infographic or even using it to show work on a math problem Google Drawings is a versatile and engaging tool for any classroom.

Agenda

Chris McCaffrey

Instructional Technology Specialist

Google Certified Trainer

Tiering without Tears:  Meeting the Needs of All Learners

This session will present the philosophy behind tiering assignments for all levels, share examples of tiering at the high school level, suggest ways for assessing tiered assignments and provide time for teachers to create their own tiered assignments.

Shelly Campbell

HS  Gifted Educator

Rethinking Grading

What is the purpose of grades? What meaning do we want our grades to communicate and who is the audience? During this session, we will examine what the current research about grading suggests and reflect upon our own use of grades in our classrooms. Our intent is to start a conversation that will lead to meaningful reflection about grading, so that we may continue to “empower our students to create their own futures”.

Agenda

Dan Kaufmann

Instructional Technology Coach

Math Department Chair

Google Certified Trainer

Under the Sheets W/ gSheets

This interactive session will dive "under the sheets" with Google Sheets. Attendees will learn to leverage Google Sheets to become more productive, create interactive and automated information tools, and save time by leveraging the many data-driven formulas and abilities Google Sheets have to offer.

Agenda

Dan Kaufmann

Instructional Technology Coach

Math Department Chair

Google Certified Trainer