Category: PD

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WebEx and LearningCatalytics Create a Virtual Keynote

Learning Catalytics BYOD

“Loved it, very interactive and would love to implement it in my class.” ~ teacher attendee

I recently was asked to keynote at the MicroSociety annual conference in Philadelphia. While my schedule prevented me from appearing in person, I thought it was a great opportunity to see if I could scale up my small group webinar model into a conference keynote.

I used WebEx as my platform and attendees brought their own web-enabled devices to respond to my questions and prompts via LearningCatalytics.

Carolynn King Richmond, President & CEO of Microsociety was so pleased with the results that she sent me this kind thank you testimonial:

“This year our organization celebrated 20 years of disrupting education’s status quo…two decades of innovation in the face of tough times. We commemorated this milestone by hosting our annual conference in our home base of Philadelphia with attendees traveling from as far as California, Canada, and Colombia, South America to join us. Over the four day span, our overarching goal was to both revisit our roots and explore new directions for growth. We wanted to present our diverse body of educators with the strategies, tools, and visions they would need to expand their minds and their MicroSociety learning environments; a new sense of directionality. As our flat world becomes immersed in this digital age of connections, it is critical that our schools travel the same trajectory.

When it came time to choose our speakers, something we did with great intentionality and purpose, Peter immediately came to mind. We were first drawn to him last summer after coming across his blog, Copy/Paste, and quickly discovered that our key tenets and philosophies were closely aligned. We had several conversations…on rigor meaning far more than increased importance on testing…on relevance being a critical piece in empowering our students to become lifelong tinkerers and seekers of knowledge…on reflection as a learning optimizer for adults and students alike. Although it would have to be delivered over WebEx, Peter’s workshop, “Rigor, Relevance, and Reflection” seemed to be the perfect fit for our conference theme and 5 minutes into his presentation my confidence in him was confirmed.

Peter used the BYOD platform Learning Catalytics in his presentation, engaging audience participation through individual’s own web-enabled devices. This enabled him to get immediate feedback and sense audience perceptions as if he were in the room with us. He provided attendees with many “light bulb moments”, as well as opportunities to examine their own practices and offerings of techniques to deepen them. It didn’t matter that Peter was in Oregon. He had our audience at “Hello.” They were captivated from the start

We cannot thank Peter enough for his contribution to our annual conference. We know that the conversation and ideas generated by his workshop will lead our team into our next phase of growth.”

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Flipped My Keynote

Tech.it.U is a premier educational technology conference (and Penn State grad course) designed to inspire and generate practical classroom ideas that “will help you teach with power and focus to impact students’ futures.”

“Thank you for making us think. You taught by example.”

I was asked to give the closing keynote on my Taxonomy of Reflection at this year’s, week-long conference. Keynoters typically show up, explain their model, answer questions, etc. If all goes well, folks leave with an understanding of the ideas you pitched to them.

Transfer of content is easy in the digital age, it’s processing the learning that’s the challenge. So I elected to flip my keynote. Why not use one of the strategies I recommend to teachers? (My slide deck on flipping your class)

To flip my keynote, I gave Tech.it.U participants some advance reading about my taxonomy. Then I used my two hours – not to present, but to put them through a variety of experiences to provoke their reflections. For example, we studied a mid-19th century primitive painting to see how students “feel” when they are asked to construct meaning when they lack background knowledge. LearningCatalytics, a BYOD-based response system, made it possible to harness the power of peer instruction and compare our reflections. 

So how did “flipping” my keynote go? I asked participants to reflect on the experience. Here’s a few of their responses:

  • What a great end to the week. You had me engaged throughout the presentation. The hands on activities with partners, the discussions or arguments with peers, and the videos were perfect. Each of these items had me analyzing, applying, understanding, and evaluating information.
  • Wow! I loved how interactive this keynote was. My brain is on overdrive trying to think of all the amazing things I want to try first. You bring a plethora of fresh ideas and thoughts.
  • I truly appreciate that throughout your presentation you modeled the kind of instruction you proposed we use with our students. That is my favorite way to learn!
  • Very inspiring presentation. Great thoughts on ways to flip the instructional model. … My head is spinning with ways to implement some of these strategies.
  • What an engaging presentation! Learning catalytics is wonderful! I had so many “aha!” moments and it triggered many engaging lesson ideas.
  • I wish more people would champion the idea that students should be responsible for their learning and that teachers should be the facilitators of or catalysts for this to happen.
  • Wow, what a great thought provoking presentation. I love the idea of turning the responsibility of learning over to the students. I am going away with multiple ideas on how I can recreate myself as an educator for my students.
  • Thank you for making us think. … You taught by example.
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Join Us at edCampPDX – Portland, Ore Aug 2

Calling all teachers, instructional technologists, IT Directors, Principals, Admins and Teacher Librarians who live in the NW. Join us at Oregon Episcopal School on Thursday, August 2nd from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. for our fourth edcampPDX. In addition to the multiple, concurrent sessions you’ve come to know and love, this EdCamp will include sessions around the common theme of social media and its use for professional development and in the classroom.

Photos from our 3rd edcampPDX  - Check out those boot! We are a stylin’ crew!

What are the goals of edcampPDX?

  • Networking: Connect educators in the Portland / Oregon area
  • Instructional Practices: Learn new curriculum ideas, best practices,
  • and/or tech integration ideas from other educators
  • Personalized: You customize your own PD by suggesting, facilitating and attending sessions about topics that interest you!

What is edcampPDX?

An edcamp is a unconference-style day of professional development organized and given by the local participants. Those who are interested pitch an idea for a conversation or hands-on session. The day of the edcamp we organize the ideas into sessions and everyone chooses which session to attend.

@actionhero finds the best stuff! I will order this today…Cosmonaut stylus #speedRound at #edcampPDX ~ Tweet from edcampPDX 3

There is always something for everyone — and if not — sign up to lead a discussion that interests you! This is the best type of PD because its about what you want and shared with other passionate, innovative educators.

Bring a friend – or better yet – bring your IT director, Principal or Teacher Librarian. You can bring a laptop or tablet – wifi is available, as well as laptops to use at OES.

What does it cost? The day is FREE!!! Optional lunch cost: $5; register online & payable at the event. Sign up to attend

Follow our Twitter updates: #edcampPDX

Join the EdCamp PDX Google Group to network and keep up with our news and notes.

Location Oregon Episcopal School
6300 SW Nicol Road
Portland, Oregon 97223
OES Campus map
Who are the organizers?

  • Colette Cassinelli, Teacher Librarian & MultiMedia, La Salle Catholic College Preparatory
  • Rachel Wente-Chaney – CIO – Central Oregon Technology (High Desert,Sisters, Crook County, and Redmond districts)
  • Peter Pappas – PDX ed blogger @edteck
  • Mike Gwaltney, Teacher, Oregon Episcopal School, Online School for Girls @MikeGwaltney 
  • Melissa Lim, Instructional Technology, Portland Public Schools
  • Luann Lee, science teacher, Newberg High School
  • Corin Richards, instructional technologist, Willamette ESD
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The Flipped Classroom: Getting Started

I recently gave a webinar on getting started with the flipped classroom. Lots of good questions – seems like many teachers see the value in using “flipping” to redefine their classrooms. They recognize that the traditional classroom was filled with a lot of lower-order, information transmission that can be off loaded to “homework” via content-rich websites and videos. That frees up more classroom time as a center for student interaction, production and reflection.

While some may think flipping is all about watching videos, it’s really about creating more time for in-class student collaboration, inquiry, and interaction. It’s also is a powerful catalyst for transforming the teacher from content transmitter to instructional designer and changing students from passive consumers of information into active learners taking a more collaborative and self-directed role in their learning.

In this webinar I address the opportunities and challenges, introduce some fundamentals and offer suggestions for getting started in a feasible way. I suspect that before long, flipping will no longer be as a fad, but simply another way point in the transition to learning environments that blend the best of face-to-face and online learning. Here’s some more of my posts tagged flipped classroom.

Download my slide deck for strategies, resources, lessons and links and more.

The Flipped Classroom: Getting Started

View more on Slideshare from Peter Pappas
Image credit flickr/pobre
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The Student as Historian: A Teaching American History Webinar

The life & age of woman. Stages of woman’s life from the cradle to the grave  [1848]

I think that this was a great learning experience. It really got me to think about my own practices in teaching.

I just wrapped up two webinars with teachers participating in a Teaching American History (TAH) Grant workshop hosted at Davis School District, Utah. We held separate one-hour sessions for elementary and secondary teacher focusing on Common Core strategies for using documents to let your students be the historian in your classroom.

For information on my webinar services click here.

I was in Portland Oregon – they were in Salt Lake City, but through the wonders of technology (I used WebEx videoconferencing along with a web-based LearningCatalytics response system) we were able to interact. I don’t think people learn much by telling them things, so I put participants “in their students’ shoes” to experience the power of document-based instruction and four key components to making it work:

  1. The right documents.
  2. Knowing how to look at them.
  3. Letting students discover their own patterns, then ask students to describe, compare and defend what they found.
  4. Basing the task on enduring questions, the kind that students might actually want to answer.

Download my slide deck for strategies, resources, lessons and links to great websites.

The Student As Historian – DBQ Strategies and Resources for Teaching History

View more on Slideshare from Peter Pappas

Here’s some of the participants’ comments:

  • This webinar was very informative, and motivates me to want to change the way I teach students. I need to allow them to make discoveries and to stimulate their interest, rather than just teach the facts. Thank you so much!!!!!!
  • Thank you! This makes learning fun and relevant for students. Could spend all summer working on this.
  • I really enjoyed your webinar. I was introduced to DBQs this last year and was amazed at how much my students bought into it and loved it. They talked about it for weeks. I’m excited to try some of the ideas you gave and am looking forward to using these ideas to create my own DBQs
  • I think that this was a great learning experience. It really got me to think about my own practices in teaching. The thing that I will remember from this Webinar is the idea that we should let the students come up with their own interpretations of documents and issues, rather than always providing them with an interpretation. Thank you!
  • Thank you for your time. Everything you presented was valuable to me as a teacher. I am excited to research your website to assist me improve my teaching.
  • I appreciate the ideas to add some new instructional methods to my classroom. …. I heard great ideas to plug in to start lessons as anticipatory sets, which gave me another way to use primary sources. Thanks!
  • I this was better than I thought it was going to be. It was informative and interactive. I liked the back and forth that we had. I felt this very helpful. Thank you!
  • This was great! I can’t wait to try some of these in my class! I think these ideas will really excite my students!
  • I liked the visuals. I liked that you gave us a picture we’d have a lot of schema on given that we’re in Utah and then one that we had very little information on. Thanks for your website. I’ve used it before.
  • I loved the idea about the pictures, and making them infer from what they see… it made me engage in the ? much more
  • This webinar kept me awake with interaction between you, us, and the computer. I enjoyed the images and pictures you shared.

A special hat tip to Jon Hyatt, Teaching American History Grant Director at Davis School District.

Image credit Kelloggs & Comstock–The life & age of woman [between 1848 and 1850]
Library of Congress