OTEN Conference February 20th 2016

Oregon Technology in Education Network

This conference was absolutely fascinating. We were given the opportunity to listen in and take part in lectures by educators about various ways technology can be used in the classroom. At first, I was nervous yet excited because I feel confident in my technological abilities, however I recognize there is so much more out there to learn. I didn't realize how ignorant and unaware I was until I saw the list of potential lectures we could attend. The first one that caught my attention was Gamification Strategy Guide, led by Chris Hesselbein.

Gamification Strategy guide was a fun, interactive discussion on how games and school relate and how we can educate based on gaming ideology. Mr. Hesselbein broke down the fundamentals of games using examples like Super Mario Brothers and sports. These fundamentals we agreed upon were: A defined goal, established rules, immediate feedback, and the idea that games are voluntary. He then asked us to take a look at school and the education system itself in that manner. Games are fun for everyone to play because they meet the 4 fundamental ideas yet school is a lousy game that nobody wants to play. The idea of Gamification is to turn non-game situations (like school) into game like scenarios but Hesselbein stressed the importance of having a concrete established lesson plan.

OTEN Conference

OTEN Conference – Graham Bledsoe

            Heading to the OTEN Conference, I really did not know what to expect. To be quite honest, I was dreading the thought of sitting and listening to different people lecture on how to teach effectively. What I left with though, was quite the opposite as I came away with a lot of useful resources that I can implement in my current and future classrooms.

            The first session I attended was the “Fun, Free, Formative Assessment Strategies” put on by Nikole W. Hartman of the Forest Grove School District. I was really impressed with this session overall and thought that Nikole provided a wide range of programs that we can use in our classrooms. I was very impressed with the program, Kahoot, which we were able to play around with by taking an interactive quiz on Shakespeare. I loved how it was both educational and a competitive game, something that I could see a lot of my students being very interested in. Another program we explored was Answer Garden, which could be used as a quick/easy daily warm-up to see if your students understood a reading, a lesson or vocab words.

            Session #2 of the day was the “Podcasting and Video Technologies in the Elementary Classroom: Ideas for creative projects with your students” that was presented by Machelle Childers of the Forest Grove School District. Machelle provided us with a lot of fun ideas that she uses in her classroom that all involve making videos. One of the video projects that I really enjoyed was based on her class’s field trip to a nearby wetland where she was able to show parents and her school exactly what they did/what they learned. I thought that this session was fun to be apart of and it was cool to see what her school was doing with podcasting but I was thinking that she was going to show us how to make these videos or show us different apps that are helpful in order for us to implement it in our classrooms.