Conference Tips for the Summer! #ISTE22

It was bound to happen. Conferences are back and teachers are ready to dive into professional development. I wanted to share some tips for anyone that is new to ISTE or any other conference. 

1. Wear comfortable shoes. You will be putting miles on your feet over the next few days and you need to take care of your feet. While wearing nice shows while you present or go out after the conferences is nice, you need comfy shoes to walk the halls and the exhibit hall. If your feet are sore after a day, the next couple will be painfully difficult to get around.

2. Stay hydrated. This is particular important for ISTE this year. Drink water all the time, especially if you will be drinking non-water drinks at night. You will not be able to concentrate and you will feel like a hot mess if you are not properly hydrated.

3. Eat. This one seems silly, but it is so easy to get wrapped up in the day and not have a good lunch or breakfast. You need energy for the day and these meals will help you get through the hustle and bustle of a conference. Eat healthy and carve out time to do it. Enter it into your planner and follow it. Your tummy will thank you later.

4. Do not be scared to say hi to people you follow on Social Media. We are all educators and are dedicated to making education better for all. Just because someone has more followers than another person, does not make them more important than everyone else. Say hi. Ask a question. Connect. This is why we are at a conference, so don't be afraid to do it. Maybe avoid talking to them in the bathroom. :-)

5. Find time to unpack. I don't mean your suitcase, I mean what you learned that day. Find a quiet spot and just reflect on what you saw and how you might bring that to your school, district or classroom. Make some notes to yourself so that you can look back at them after the conference and remember what you were thinking when everything was fresh in your mind.

6. Check out the conference sessions and try to plan accordingly. I'd love it if you came to my sessions. I'm doing a session on MakerEd on Monday. Look at the schedule and add the sessions that interest you most. If there is more than one session you want to attend, see if there is a friend going and get their notes. There is never enough time to see everything, so it is important to plan ahead so you do not miss everything.

7. Visit the vendors. I always like to take time to visit the vendor hall and check out anything new and to just say thanks for the cool and innovative things they have brought to the classroom. I always end up with a couple of new gadgets I want to bring into the classroom or want to explore. They vendors help make conferences possible, so please stop by and check them out.

8. Vote with your feet. This staple of edcamp is important at conferences. Time is limited and you do not want to waste it in a session that is not what you hoped. Get up and go. You will not be offending anyone. You need to get the most out of your time at a conference and sitting in a session for an hour not learning anything is not a good use of your time. This is why it is good to have a backup session for each time slot in case you have a bad one. If you can't get into a back up session, go to one of the lounges and connect with others. Some of the best learning happens in the hallways.

9. Go out and have fun! After each day, there is fun to be had at many of the restaurants around the convention center. It is a great time to connect and talk about the things you have learned and make new friends. Some of my closest friends were made at a conference. Getting together and celebrating an end of a school year and the cool things you have learned is a must. Do that with other great educators at the end of each day and you will have a great conference.

If any other veteran conference attendees have other tips, please add them to the comment section. I hope all of you will take the time to stop and say Hi if you see me. I'd love to connect with all of you and learn something new.

Hugs and High Fives,

Nick

An Anxious Introvert's Guide to Conferences #EdChat #MACUL22

Well, conferences are back and introverts like myself are getting anxious. I will actually going to my first conference in a couple of days after a two year hiatus. My state conference, MACUL, was actually cancelled midway through because of the COVID lockdown. As I gear up for a couple of days of learning, I started to think of all of the different things I'm going to need to do to focus on my mental health as I reintroduce myself to the hustle and bustle of conference season. Here are some things for my fellow anxiety ridden friends and introverted buddies can do to help make conferences tolerable. 

1. Pace yourself

The worst thing you can do is try drinking from the firehose. Diving into a bunch of sessions and surrounding yourself with tons of strangers is exactly how you trigger an anxiety attack. Start slow and go to a session and then take some time away to think about what you did and go to the next session after the break. You need time to process and that is impossible if you are jumping from one session to the next. 

2. Hydrate yourself

Hydration is huge. For me, dehydration is a trigger for panic attacks. I have to stay hydrated so my mind can stay focused. Bring a water bottle and hit the water stations on a regular basis. Keep drinking and be ok with having to go to the bathroom often. Hydration will save from drowning in anxiety. 

3. Support yourself

Take the "me time" you need at the conference. Do not feel compelled to attend every event and engage with everyone all of the time. Bring some earbuds, listen to something that is calming, and just find your center when you feel overwhelmed. You will not be able to retain the knowledge from sessions if you are in a constant state of fight or flight. Take the time for you so you can get the most out of the session you attend during the conference. 

4. Push yourself

If you feel up for it, try and push yourself a little bit. Maybe participate a little in a session here and there or go to an event after the conference day has ended if you have the energy. As an introvert, I know how tough it can be to be surrounded by so many different people and just be overwhelmed. Dip a toe in here and there and see how it feels. Never feel bad if you need to check out because it is all too much. Your mental health is number one. Push yourself when you are ready. 

5. Reward yourself

If you spent a few days at a conference and learned a bunch, reward yourself with some "me time" away from the world. Grab a book or curl up on the couch and just veg. You have put your brain and body through a stressful ordeal and will be exhausted. Treat yourself to something awesome because you have earned it. 

For those of you who are not anxious about conferences or are extroverts, please know that everyone who is an introvert or is anxious presents very differently. Many people who assume that "The Nerdy Teacher" can't be anxious or an introvert and they would be right. "The Nerdy Teacher" is not an anxious person. "The Nerdy Teacher" is very extroverted. However, Nicholas Provenzano is a ball of anxiousness and super introverted. Putting on the "Nerdy Teacher" mask is something I do so I can cope with  the conference world and allows me to compartmentalize those anxious and introverted feelings. It is exhausting though. Any person that puts on the mask knows exactly what I am talking about. 

I share all of this because if know your friends are introverted or easily overwhelmed at events, please be understanding, kind, and supportive. When things get to be too much, we just need a friend to understand. 

Share this with your anxious and introverted friends and your extroverted friends to give them a sense of what it going on in our heads. 

Reflection as Assessment #MakerEd #EdChat

One of the things that I am often asked is how I assess MakerEd work from students. The traditional education system is still grade focused. Students are taught from a very young age to chase the grade because that is what matters in the end. 

Getting students to understand that there is more to school than grades requires serious retraining on the teacher's part. It is not impossible, but it is not easy. One of the ways I have helped my students explore learning and MakerEd in my Mechanical Engineering class is the emphasis we place on reflection.

Each unit is a challenge that students need to complete. They can design their own solutions based on their research and there are goals they are trying to reach, but they are not assessed, or graded, on if they reach those goals. Their assessment is how they reflect on their work in the challenge. Here is one example, 

Students are tasked with building a bride using glue and no more than 200 craft sticks. Their bridge needs to be able to support at least 100 pounds. They will do the research and design a bridge they think will best accomplish this goal. When the bridges are done, we take the total sticks used and subtract that number from the total weight it held. The group with the highest number at the end won the challenge. 

When they have completed the testing and reviewed all of their work and the work of other groups, they are given a reflection sheet. The reflection asks students to explore why they were or were not successful. Their ability to be critical of the work, or lack there of, they put in is important. The first reflections are often the toughest for students because they are hesitant to be critical of their own work thinking it will lead to bad grades. In reality, the students that dive deeper and are critical of their decisions get the most out of class.

My job during the project time is to be engaged with the students, advise them on their choices as they work, provide feedback on their process, and support their overall needs while working. After the reflection is submitted, my job is to provide my thoughts on their thoughts. It starts a conversation about their learning process. As we move through the semester, I have found that some students are too hard on themselves and sometimes do not recognize the successes they had in the project. Students are still very new to the reflection process so I need to support them as they learn to highlight the wins and understand the loses. 

At the end of the day, I have to place a grade in the grade book. The students earn their grade through reflection and dialogue. These reflections are saved and explored at the end of the semester where they are asked to show the growth points in the class. If we truly want growth for our students, you can't have it without reflection. It is a shame that reflections tends to be the first things skipped when we run out time. 

How do you use reflection in your classes?

Sharing with #Evernote at Conferences #ASCD13

For those of you who do not know, I am an avid tweeter. I love going to conferences and tweeting the day away sharing amazing resources with people around the world. That has worked nice, but I have always struggled with writing blog posts after conferences. All of my information has been spread out over a series of tweets and I do not write my blog posts until later. It is very hard to find the tweets I sent about a specific session.

I decided to try something new at #ASCD13. I would take my notes in a session on Evernote and then Tweet out the link to my Evernote Note to everyone out there using the hashtag. I received great feedback by using this approach to sharing notes from a session. I think people like the individual tweets, but the complete notes from a session are just as valuable to others.

Anyone can share an individual note at anytime with the share feature of a note. People will be able to view the note as long as I want them to and I can pull it back at any time I want. I do not see any reason why I might do that, but it is nice to have that option. Below you will see a screen show of the notes and the sharing option for Twitter and other Social Media buttons.

I still intend to tweet from some sessions and during most conferences, but I will start to do more of my sharing from Evernote.

In case you are interested in the session I was at, it was by @megormi and it was about technology in the classroom. Here is the link to the Evernote Note.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s4/sh/ab1cd471-0c5b-41d4-9c00-903956a85a60/bf0a7cd0eb55d02942b09c4c36418b90

If you want to start your Evernote journey now, follow this link to sign up!

Conferences: What's the point?

Before you freak, hear me out. I'm just so tired of conferences. I go to these things and I spend most of my time learning and sharing, learning and sharing. It is exhausting. I feel like there is only so much sharing and learning a person can do. Your idea and my idea, your idea and my idea. What's the point?

Conferences are a huge tease. They seem to say, "Come over and we can hang out and have a great time. I will show you amazing thing that will revolutionize your classroom" When I get there, they do show me some amazing things. I get very excited at what I see. Then, I realize I can' have it. My district isn't set up for this, school policy doesn't allow for that or my department would burn me in effigy. I'm not sure I can handle listening to the amazing things happening in Iowa, New Jersey, Philly, etc. without going crazy. I'm all for new ideas, but why do people need to rub in our faces. What's the point?

The only thing that keeps me going is the concept that frustration can breed innovation. Is all of this frustration I face on a regular basis going to prepare me for the next big idea? I just want tea change to be a little easier. This frustration seems to cause more pain than innovation. What's the point?

Wouldn't it be easier to just shut my classroom door and bury my head in lessons? Why endure a barrage of great ideas that will never happen for me or my students? Why spend hours discussing what I want with people who already have? What's the point?

All of this knowledge is just breeding frustration. I want what is best for my students and I need to walk them through a mine field of bad ideas and policy to get it. What's the point?

What is the point?

Oh, I'm an educator and I give a damn.

That's the point.

See you at the next conference. :-)

- @TheNerdyTeacher