I had the pleasure of attending The Fresno EdTechTeam Summit on February 4th and 5th at Washington Union High school in Fresno, CA. I attended the last Fresno Summit in 2015 and left feeling empowered! I had been waiting for another local summit for a few years and I knew attending again would lead to lots of innovative inspiration! I was giddy with excitement leading up to the weekend and didn’t mind being late to my own Super Bowl party on Sunday! It was worth it!
Day 1!! We started the weekend off with a great keynote speaker, Jeffery Heil who touched on Tech, High Expectations and the art of Relationships! Listening to his students’ successes was very inspiring and was a great kickoff to the weekend. (pun intended)
“All kids deserve equitable learning outcomes.” -Jeffery Heil
I was able to attend Katie Gault’s session on Google Forms. It was very informative and a big takeaway from the session was using forms for assessment. “Instant Formative Feedback,” was the session title. It was great to learn about tips and tricks that Katie utilizes in her classrooms. I also won some sweet google “geek gold” as I call it, in the form of a pen! Google swag is always awesome!
Second session was with the one and only, Mark Hammons. “Mean Streets” Mark keeps his sessions fresh. He has great tools and tips to demonstrate at all of his sessions. This was my second time going to one of his sessions on Google Maps and I was not disappointed! Have you heard of Google Earth Engine? It’s just multi-petabyte catalog of satellite imagery!
My third session was with Katherine Goyette. This was probably one of the most inspirational, motivational and useful sessions for me during my weekend at the Summit. Collaboration is huge. There is no doubting that. It is obvious that properly implemented and utilized PLCs are integral to successful education. Why not utilize technology to give your PLC a boost?!
“Strong systems will fail in a weak culture.” -Katherine Goyette
Culture and collaboration are so important!
Session four, I attended In-Class Flip, by Michael Watkins. Michael is a local teacher who utilizes a station rotation and flipped classroom model. It was great to see how effective his teaching time has become, due to this model’s implementation in his classroom.
Day one was over and I was PUMPED. I packed up my Tech Burrito and headed home to rest and get ready for day two!
Day Two!! Kelly Kermode rocked her keynote and was awesome! Takeaway= campfire classrooms! I could go on all day about this topic. I have been reading and implementing ideas from the book, The Space, A Guide for Educators and I’m constantly thinking back to Kelly’s keynote.
Session five, Google Sites! I had used the old sites site before, but had never taken the time to venture into the new sites site. It is awesome! This was a 101 session. It was awesome to get my hands dirty and start making some sweet looking pages for my school Minecraft Club as well as my personal site.
During the sixth session, I headed over to Jeffery Heil’s Geeky session on Google Docs. Wonderfully set up and explained, Jeffery led us through a very impressive example of a Google Doc he created. It was nice and geeky.
Session seven, I attended a PBL preso by Kaitlin Morgan, another local teacher. She teaches at Minarets High School, where classes are Project Based! Kaitlin had great insights on how to use PBL in your classroom along with tech!
Sadly the last session was upon us, I chose to attend Student Tech Teams. Another excellent Katherine Goyette preso! Students can get together and create a tech team on campus that can possibly provide them with skills they need to be future leaders! Students who don’t typically go out of their way to show what they know, now have an avenue to show off and improve their skills.
This summit was amazing. I had a blast. I learned a ton! I can’t wait for the next Summit! Major takeaways were collaboration and empowering students. I left with an updated outlook on teaching; I want to embrace my district’s goal of ending generational poverty through education and add to it a technology piece. I want to empower students to extricate themselves and their future families from generational poverty. Technology plays a huge role in empowering students to their full potential. Thank you EdTechTeam!!!
Tyler Toews
Math Ed Specialist
Central California
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