Spice It Up Conference a Success!

Walled Lake Consolidated Schools' "Spice it Up!" Technology Conference was a smashing success! The day began with a bit of stress when Bruce Umpstead, our keynote speaker, was stuck in a one-hour traffic jam on I-96. He arrived about 20 min late, and handled it like a pro. His message was clear and it aligns with Walled Lake's philosophy - you cannot just throw technology at students and hope it makes a difference in student achievement. Instead, teaching must change to allow the positive changes to occur. Students must collaborate, investigate, create, and think - adding technology makes it easier to provide learning experiences that are differentiated and meaningful.

The staff at Sarah Banks Middle School understands the importance of customer service. The custodians worked extra hard to move furniture, shine floors, and make the school a beautiful place to learn. The secretarial staff worked like busy beavers - from providing directions and information about the conference on the phone, to purchasing and selling lunches, to making more copies of handouts. Lynn Dunn, the school computer resource teacher, worked with me on her day off to set up computers, projectors, power strips and other equipment. Bryan Koval, district technician, helped set up computers, install needed software, and made 30-foot long ethernet cords in case the wireless network had issues. Mark Hess, who worked with me as co-chair of the conference, provided exceptional leadership in every way.

Over 30 Walled Lake teachers, stepped up to share their knowledge and experiences as presenters. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I wish I had offered more Office 2007 and Schoolworld web sites sessions, these were packed! Teachers learned to podcast, create video, make websites, use web 2.0 applications, use MOODLE, among MANY other things.

Mike Bryant, regional manager for the Discovery Educator Network, traveled all the way from Illinois to present three sessions showing teachers how to incorporate DiscoveryStreaming video, audio, images, and more into any curriculum.

Laura Cummings and Mike Soudin, Oakland Schools, showed their support by presenting on a variety of topics and participate in other sessions.

Lunchtime was also a time for learning!  Mrs. Beverwyck, our Asst Superintendent of Curriculum, shared her thoughts about technology use. Next, we saw the video "A Vision of K-12 Students Today" to prompt our thinking, and finally asked questions of a student panel, five high school students who shared their experiences and ideas regarding using technology at school and at home.  One student stated, "One of my teachers recorded podcasts to help us review for tests, which was helpful.  However, if we could have created our own podcasts, we could have learned even better, because if you are teaching others, you learn the material better."

Mark Hess facilitated a half-day administrative session. I was able to sit in for about 20 minutes, and was very impressed with what he shared. He spoke about how he became interested in technology without ever having taken a computer class. He talked about vision, setting goals, and how to create an environment where technology use is a part of everyday school life.

I'll be creating an on-line survey to solicit specific feedback from the attendees. It's never to early to begin thinking about ways to improve the conference for 2009!