I'm Presenting At FlipCon15

I am honored to have been selected to present both a session and a poster session at FlipCon15!

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The 8th Annual Flipped Learning Conference will be held in East Lansing, Michigan this year on the campus of Michigan State University.

I will be presenting on Flipped Learning On The Go With iBooks and my poster presentation will be Creating Flipped Lessons On And For The iPad.

Apple Academy in Cupertino

I will be attending Apple Foundations Academy in Cupertino, California this upcoming February!

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The Academy will cover train-the-trainer training on all of the Apple apps for the MacBook and iPad. Following the training, I will be an authorized Apple Foundations Trainer for my school district.

Blog Love or Neglect?

I was re-evaluating my performance as a Connected Educator today and decided I need to refocus some of my effort on keeping up with my own blog and reflecting on my practices as a digital leader and technology integrationist.

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Lately I have found myself sharing ideas via Voxer and Twitter much more than through this blog. I was prompted to compare my blog, Twitter, and Voxer by John Spencer's blog post Five Reasons The Conversations Have Moved From Twitter To Voxer.

I think the purpose of why I use each is very different. For me, Voxer is more of a tool for a conversational dialogue with a small group of educators from Minnesota, Iowa, and Canada where we share the educational endeavors that we're currently engaged with in our respective positions. Twitter is much more of a consumption-based tool for me as I connect with and learn from a broader group of colleagues, friends, educators, and like-minded individuals who represent a variety of careers and interests as well as geographic locations. Blogger is my content sharing tool of choice as well as a forum for reflective thought around improving my own practice as well as sharing resources with others.

As a Connected Educator, I don't think that one tool is better than the others as they are all different and allow me to connect with and reach different groups and audiences for different purposes.

So while I may have been sharing and connecting more via Twitter and Voxer lately, Blogger is still a critical tool for me as it allows me to tie together not only my thinking but resources that I would like to share with others.

ISTE2015 Speaker

Proposal selections for ISTE2015 were announced today, and I'm honored to be able to say that I will be a speaker at the next ISTE conference in Philadelphia this June.

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In fact, I received a triple honor of having three proposals selected and a fourth selected but on a waiting list for now!

I will be presenting on:

• 30 Plus Ways To Use Your iPad For Personalized Professional Development
• Bridging The Digital Divide With A Racial Equity Lens

I will also be doing a three hour workshop on:

• Publishing Amazing Interactive Books With iBooks Author

The fourth session that is currently waitlisted until space becomes available is a BYOD session:

• Easy Formative Assessment Options For Mobile Devices

Augmented Reality

Is augmented reality the next big thing in the educational world?

Aurasma has been available for about three and a half years now and although I had not heard of Daqri until this past summer, it has been in existence for about the same amount of time as well. Lately, these two apps have been getting a lot of mention on Twitter and YouTube, and I'm wondering if augmented reality might finally be making its way into the mainstream educational world along with 3D printers.

Through some behind the scenes work by Brad Gustafson (@gustafsonbrad on Twitter) of the Minnesota Educators on Voxer, a series of short videos on the value of being Connected Educators submitted by members of the group were edited together and the resulting video was linked to aura that triggers the video through the Aurasma and Daqri apps.

If you have Aurasma, scan the picture of the front of the Voxer group t-shirt and follow Greenwood Elementary's channel to watch the video.

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If you have Daqri scan the picture of the state of Minnesota icon to watch the video.

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Click here to play the video if you do not have one of the apps and cannot see the video embedded below.

Minnesota Educators on Voxer - Why I'm A Connected Educator

Why I'm a Connected Educator? That's the question of the hour...

Members of the Minnesota Educators on Voxer group are creating 10 - 15 second video clips about why we value being part of our PLN group on Voxer to be linked in an augmented reality video to our Voxer group t-shirts.

My video about why I'm a connected educator is embedded below:

TEDx Burnsville Video Released - Real World Ready

The long-awaited TEDx Burnsville videos have been released and I'm excited to share mine below.

Please watch why I believe we need to start recognizing that our students learn differently than most of their teachers did and that traditional classrooms must change in order to retain our students' interest and develop their academic skills.

The amount of screen time that our students devote to their interests and hobbies online could impact their academic learning if schools tapped into using more digital resources and online delivery formats that could extend the school day beyond the classroom walls and typical school day bells.

The amount of technology from previous generations still being used in our schools today seemed to hit home with the audience as a humorous walk down the path of instructional technology used during my K-12 educational years. If you missed an earlier blog post I wrote about some of the inspirations for my TEDx Talk, it's worth noting that the idea for sharing the timeline of educational technology was spurred by this 2011 Edudemic article by Jeff Dunn on the "Evolution of Classroom Technology" and has been a topic that I have poked fun at in some of my previous ISTE presentations over the years.

A popular flat icon graphic from my presentation was the depiction below created by my amazing colleague David Freeburg based on an Apple presentation showing the timeline of our current students' lives and the immersive availability of technology that has developed throughout their short lifetimes.

Image Credit: David Freeburg

I would be remiss if I also did not give credit to another of my talented colleagues, Lee Vang, whose images below not only demonstrate her eye for layout and skill with Photoshop, but also represent visuals for two of the primary initiatives in my school district that the department I am working in supports.

Image Credit: Lee Vang

I hope that watching my TEDx video inspires other educators to see the need for change in the classroom to better engage our students today.