I'm going to reflect and share what I learned in each of the sessions and what I'm excited about coming out of the sessions.
Understanding 21 Century Learners Project
Last year there were 7 schools in the division that took on this project. The project is an opportunity for schools to create a team and have that team become school experts in an aspect of 21 Century Learning (21CL). The schools are given a chunk of money for the lead teams to get extra training on the aspect of 21CL that they chose to focus on. Then go back and deploy their learning in the classroom and share with their colleagues in hopes to educate their colleagues and show the benefits of creating a 21CL environment. There were some excellent ideas shared. Some schools created and empowered the students to become "tech experts" in the school to help other students and staff with basic problems. A couple schools focused on green screen technology, video conferencing, classroom blogging and the list goes on.
The hope is that my school will join this venture and pair up with one of the existing schools to achieve whatever goal we want to help our staff in understanding 21CL. I am excited and I hope our application is approved as I really want to help move my school forward in understanding and using strategies to engage and excite the 21C learners we have.
Managing Meltdowns
In this session I learned about the difference between temper tantrums and meltdowns. Temper tantrums being an act by a child who has complete control of their actions in order to achieve their desired outcome or goal. A meltdown is when a student completely loses control and has no goal or outcome in their mind in which they want to achieve.
I also learned that we can be proactive in controlling or limiting tantrums and meltdowns by building a relationship with the student(s), understanding what their "triggers" are and changing the action or behaviour at the stage so that it doesn't escalate to the meltdown or tantrum stage.
I wish I would have taken this session last year but I'm sure I'll be able to put my learning to action in the future as well.
Breeze by Dreamstalk
This was a session to introduce the new web design company/software that our school division is going to be launching. Another great session as the software is extremely easy to use and I hope that it's ease of use will increase the likelihood of my goal to start a classroom blog with both my class and hopefully some other teachers as well.
Ipads in the Elementary Classroom
This session I lead with a colleague of mine +Tia Grahn . We went in with hopes to change the way a PD session looked and felt. We created a project based learning environment with a dynamic powerpoint presentation on Google docs in which we will update as more people add to the ideas we've shared. I learned about some great apps that can be used in the classroom in the upcoming year as well which is an added bonus.
Overall the "Summer Institute" has really got me energized and excited for the upcoming school year! I'm excited to and looking forward to continuing to adapt my classroom into a classroom for the 21st Century Learner.
