3 Big Takeaways

School Redesin was presented by KS Commissioner of ED, Randy Watson.  School systems are being designed to better meet student needs and a global world. Go to ksde.org for more info.

A group met to discuss potential community partners to bring professionals into the classroom.

Badges for students: we learned about badges that can go along with PBL lessons and higher level thinking activities to motivate students to stretch their minds.

1. I went to a session about Genius Hour and wow wow! The Ideas and excitement I have from that session! I am so excited to start a Genius Hour in my classroom! 

2. During the Genius Hour session. I was able to talk to a principal who started a Genius Hour in his school. He gave me great advice on how to split kids into groups based on their interests, i.e. an "art group" "sports group" etc. So excited to do this! 

3. I loved talking to other teachers at the Redefining PD. It was so cool to share Badges 4 Bears with everyone!!!

4. I got linked up to several Seesaw blogs! Can't wait for my kids to explore other class blogs. 

1. Unschool Challenge!
2. Go to BIE website for great PBL ideas!
3. We are only as great as we make ourselves out to be. So, take what we have learned, share it with everyone, and use it even if we fail.

I attended my first "official" edcamp and enjoyed it very much. I was able to engage in good conversation with other teachers from around the area. Some of my big takeaways from #edcampLiberty were: 

Number 1: Genius hour...I've heard of Genius hour and have began thinking about ways to implement it into my classroom. During this EdCamp I was able to hear ideas from teachers and principals, at all levels, that are currently or will be implementing the idea. This is going straight to my summer "teacher" bucket list of ideas to dig deeper into and create a plan for implementation during the 2017/2018 school year.


Number 2: I was introduced to Pineapple Charts 😳 This is where teachers invite other teachers/administrators/instructional coaches  into their classroom to observe various actitives. I ❤️ this idea. Very similar to #observeme except there is a chart and teachers write down activites/lessons happening in their classroom, so peers know when a good time to observe would be. I think if we could find a way to tie this in with #observeme the feedback given on #observeme would be more helpful. I also see this as a way of getting more teachers to try new ideas/tech in their classroom. 

Number 3: My PLN grew!  Which is important to me. It gives me a group to call on when I need ideas, or support that I may not be able to find within the district. It's always nice to connect with other teachers. 

Overall it was a good day of learning and sharing ideas. I'm glad I attended. 

I learned a lot of new tech resources, linked up here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X6U2Kgo3NSh5wy3zwRuLxSJTvjPymwZxYJbfrE67AIE/edit
I got so much inspiration just from being in Liberty Middle School! They have flexible seating in every classroom. They also have sliding walls between classrooms that teach the same thing so that teachers can easily combine their classroom. They have "flexible learning spaces" out in the halls with all kinds of fun seating in every content area pod. I took lots of photos for later inspiration.
A teacher mentioned the concept of a "Day of Passion" where each teacher teaches a workshop on something they are personally passionate about (sewing, knitting, foreign films, creative writing, composing, etc). They did it as an end of the year celebration, but I think it would be amazing to do at the beginning of the year. It would be a great way to form teacher/kid connections and could lead to clubs. 
One teacher mentioned having kid tech experts teach the teachers about different technologies during a PD day. We tried something similar with this after school last year, and we didn't get a ton of buy-in. However, I'm wondering if it would work better if we did it during TLT meetings once a month, so that teachers didn't have to stay after school. Also, I think it could work with tech clubs...they would be our "tech experts" for the building.