Summary of attendance

I learned way more than I had anticipated. I participated in the online conference "Global Collaboration: Connect your kids to the world" on 11/15/2017 from 10-11pm. It was moderated by Leigh Zeitz, Ping Gao, and Magda Galloway. I learned that the reasons why it is important to globally collaborate is to make students engaged learners, culturally competent, gain communication skills, and learn more about the world. These are things that could maybe be taught without communicating globally, but doing so would make their experiences authentic and meaningful. I learned what it means to actually collaborate globally. Collaborating globally is designed to empower students by engaging them in authentic learning experiences, helping them solve problems, and setting them up to be successful in the future. I learned that the 3 types of global collaboration are problem solving, information collection, and interpersonal exchange. My main take away for global collaboration was to start small and practice. I got a list of resources from this conference that I am excited to further look at. 

Last night, I went to Melanie Adams lecture on professionalism and resume building, and I learned more than I ever thought I would. She detailed the importance of professionalism in the classroom, and noted that wardrobe is an immediate representation of the respect you wish to obtain from your students, their parents, and your colleagues. Further, she explained the necessity of having a solid resume and honed in on the importance of interviews. I will use this knowledge both in the present and the future, as it is important both now and later. People only know others from the information one allow them to see and understand- we must make a point to look our best to gain the respect our credibility deserves. 

This workshop talked about how to use technology to communicate with other people in other places from our classrooms. This is something that, as an English teacher, i could see myself using when I begin my career. I might would use it now, too, because the social media platforms that they talked about (Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Seesaw, etc) are things that I have used now and will continue to use. 

During this speaker event, we learned about how to write a teacher's resume and how to professionally dress like a teacher. I loved the speaker so much and feel like I learned a LOT of great information. I learned the correct information to include in my resume that makes me look the most qualified for a teaching position. I also got a lot of great useful information about how to professionally dress like a teacher. I can use that information while I do my field experiences to make sure I look appropriate. I can use the resume information while I am in college to prepare for my future interviews. 

This conference lead my Mr. Titki Omar and he talked about Promoting Internationalism in teaching and preparing global citizens through exchange projects. Omar was one of 2017 Great Global Project Challenge Grant winners. He was also a high school english teacher in Morocco. He had several bits of information to share to current and future teachers who want to start implementing exchange projects in their classrooms. He talked a lot about finding partners and platforms to help execute projects like this. His project was an English project called "Different But Same". I also attached a few links to some stories he shared during the workshop. 

In this webinar, we talked a lot about urging kids to help their own communities, and improving their contributions to society. A lot of talk about volunteer work, and also directions on how to instill these values into them. There was talk about how to make students want to get involved (make them feel like they're making a difference). I think it's an important idea and that students could learn a great deal. 

For my second workshop, I attended the online Global Education Conference. The session that I participated in was titiled: Student Conversation on Gender and Ethics. It was run by Sean Terwillinger. The webinar included a discussion by high school girls at a rural boarding school. They discussed how they are treated based on their gender and they also discussed gender inequality and harassment in the workplace. 

I attended a webinar on November 13th from 6pm to 7pm. It was presented by Monica Burns over the topic of 10 Tips to Differentiate Reading. Monica began by introducing what differentiated instruction is and how teachers can “actively plan for students’ differences”. This idea made me think of how when I make lesson plans, I always have a section for accommodations. Monica talked about how accommodations and differentiation can be made through use of multimedia materials – perhaps in audio or visual support. It also is really important to gauge interest of your students. You can do this through surveys, polls, conversations, or open-ended responses. This is important because it gives students control of their learning and therefore will keep them more engaged. For example, when asking students to describe what kind of reading material they are interested in (fairytales, superheroes, mysteries) you can ask them to take a survey and list their top three choices. This helps teachers ensure they gather appropriate materials and prepare for differentiated instruction. More tips that Monica touched on were reading buddies, strategic partnerships, and high-interest reading materials. These tips heavily emphasis on student collaboration, student-driven instruction, and obtaining of valuable, highly desired reading materials. Consistent conferring was the next tip that Monica touched on. She discussed how regularly assessing and checking for understanding is critical in differentiated instruction. Another tip was varying student responses. This means that students can respond in many different ways such as audio, visual, or use of digital tools. This gives students the freedom to illustrate their learning and understanding in a way that works for them. The last tip Monica offered was family sharing because it emphasizes transparency and team-building. In my future classroom, I'll try incorporate the tips that work best with my students and support my readers the most. 

I learned all about how to teach my students about digital literacy. How to tell real news from fake news. There is a lot of news circulating online thanks to social media. How do we know which news is real and which news is fake? This is important for our students to learn about because people are so easily influenced by what they see, hear, and read online. I also learned all about teaching students to speak up when they encounter or witness online bullying or inappropriate behavior. These things will be very important to teach in my future classroom because even at a young age, children are online now more than ever. 

I actually really enjoyed this webinar. It was Dr.Cullen's over using children's literature in the class room, and more specifically about using children's literature to hit the ISTE standards. I had never really previously thought about using literature to introduce children to technology safety. I had recently starting thinking about how to use children's literature to infuse math with reading, however, I loved getting to see all the book Dr.Cullen had about cyber safety/cyber bullying. I personally feel like cyber bullying is a huge issue, and even though I am going to be teaching secondary, I found it very helpful to see these books because I could/should still use them in my high school class. Also, I appreciated hearing Dr.Cullen's advice about how to obtain a little library as a teacher, since books are so expensive. Her tips like, wait for retiring teachers, retiring librarians, or end-of-year library sales, were great! Lastly, I think I took from this most that it doesn't matter what age you're teaching/planning on teaching, cyber bullying is a pressing and important issue regardless of age and it cannot just be ignored. 

This webinar was called Shifting Our Thinking About Educational Technology. In this webinar Dr. Burns talked about her book, Tasks Before Apps, and the three Cs. The three c's are Creation, Curiosity and Collaboration. 
Creation was about content consumption vs. content creation, its products, how to guide creation and some tools for it. Curiosity was about how to use technology to spark your students' curiosities. Collaboration was about how to transfer skills and its many applications in the classroom. 

The three main goals in the webinar is to remember the life of Anne Frank, understand the consequences to racism and anti-semantic, and know how to respond.  Relating Anne’s story to students’ testimonies allows a bridge of understanding to happen. In order to reduce racism, awareness and change needs to happen. Grasping history and knowing what happened in the past allows to provide a way for the future. There are resources provided on the website to further explain Anne Frank’s story.