Student Teaching: Week 4 Teacher Workshop

The other day was my first teacher workshop. It was a lot different than I thought it would be. Whenever there was a teacher workshop day in school I use think teachers spent the whole day grading papers and writing lesson plans, so I was a little interested when I had to sign up for basically mini seminars. It was fun going to a different school and seeing some of the culture in that school. You can tell the difference in the way teachers from one school interact with other teachers.

The seminars were wonderful. The first one I went to was a seminar done by a high school math teacher and was about social media. He talked about using certain technologies in the classroom like document cameras, iPads, and Chromebooks. He then started on the topic of social media in the classroom. I maybe a technology guy but I don’t use heavy social media technology so it was nice to see some of the creative ways to use social media. I now have an Emodo and Twitter account which I am going to spend sometime playing with to adapt it for future class use. We also started going over iUniversity but didn't get very far because we ran out of time.

The second seminar was called the Digital War. This was my favorite seminar. It was about how there is a technology war between teachers and tech savvy students. There was a student giving the presenter a hand. He was a smart tech kid who liked to play pranks on teachers using technology, and bend or breaking rules that restrict technology. The presenter took the side of the argument that we need to be on the same side with students on technology and not fight them. The fun part about this seminar was how it erupted into a debate because a large number of the audience were older teachers from the age of “If I see it, I take it away” and the others were young like me who see things a little differently.

The third seminar was about Google scripts. In particular in was two pre-made scripts which are nice and useful for grading and passing documents back and forth on Google Docs. I wanted a bit more form the seminar. A few different scripts or how you can make your own scripts. Google Scripts is 90% JavaScript with a few different libraries which allow you to do some wonderful things with Google Docs and other Google apps. I got to answer some programming questions which was fun.

The last part of the day was a keynote speaker. He was funny. He talked about kids not having enough grit today. I know plenty of young adults my age who still don’t have true grit but it gets worse as you go down the line. I can agree with all that he said, I see it and I lived it. I was grit less for a good while in my life but things change, making me have to change too. Grit is something you earn, it can’t be gift wrapped by your mommy and daddy. I didn't like his PowerPoint. He had too many words and way too many sound effects and special effects. It hurt to watch the PowerPoint.