Takeaways from #OETC15 (Day One)

I'm at the Ohio Educational Technology Conference in Columbus this week and feeling lucky to be here, sharing, learning, and collaborating. Since I know I have more than a few colleagues who couldn't attend, I'm engaging in some "mini-journaling" so they can be here vicariously!

Morning Session: Flipping Your Staff Meeting
Develop the definition of a Flipped Staff Meeting, look at activities which work well presented through the Flipped model, and discover tools to implement.

• DO create videos for your staff to watch. 
• DON'T record yourself talking for ten minutes. That's not innovative. Or creative. Recorded lecturing is just as boring as live lecturing. 
• DO provide an agenda of bullet points to be covered. 
• DON'T read directly from PowerPoint slides. Again, boring.
• DO make it fun. Add a soundtrack. Use a trailer template from iMovie. trailers. Go outside. Use PowToon. Personalize it. Put yourself in there. 
• DON'T record yourself sitting in your office. 
• DO offer questions and videos to review before the meeting and to be discussed during the meeting.
• A flipped meeting is NOT a substitute for a staff meeting so don't treat it like one. Be creative, be engaging, and have FUN!
• Oh, and podcasts are an option, too!

Afternoon Session: Online Assessments Toolkit
Want to truly prepare our students for the NGAs? Then start providing assignments and assessments that are "NGA-esque." While Eric Curts provided a literal plethora of helpful tools and resources today, here are my faves:

• Slideshow: "Creating Online Assessments with Google Forms" Don't let the title fool you. View this slideshow to see some startling statistics about how students are faring on the NGAs and how they see things.
• Cool Tool: EdCite This is THE tool I'll be sharing with our teachers. EdCite allows teachers to build NGA homework assignments on their own...and even allows them to pull from a vast library. 

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