Celebrating Failure in Rm 613

If I learned anything from ISTE, its that caffeine is an absolute necessary. With so many activities, sessions, social events, and adrenaline, I needed coffee to stay alert and focused so that I could absorb as much learning as necessary. Here are some of my final takeaways from #ISTE2016: No matter your expertise, there is always something new to learn . During Glenn Wiebe 's session about Google Tools in the Social Science, I learned about  Google Public Data , a resource that gathers public data into one place;  Google Arts and Culture , a collection of resources from around the world; and  Chronicling America , a collection of US newspapers from the Library of Congress. Wiebe even walked us through a lesson where we determined the relationship between three separate images by utilizing Google Streetview and Google Public data; this ended up being an excellent example of push and pull factors that lead to migration. What I loved about this session is that...

Twitter is by far my favorite social media app. It has opened up so many opportunities for me and has given me so many amazing connections with educators all over the world. I've always wanted to integrate into my classroom for student use, but, due to my former school's policies, I could not. With my employment at Minarets, I was finally given the opportunity to do it, but -- I'm embarrassed to admit -- it took me nine months to finally get my students to use Twitter. As always, the possibility of failure made me hesitant to even try implementing Twitter into my classroom. I came up with so many excuses and reasons for why I couldn't do it: I'm still adjusting to Minarets and I don't have time to focus on Twitter on top of everything else. Well the students are blogging so that will get them connected to other people. I don't want to expose students to another way to bully or harass each other. I like my job too much to risk it for Twitter assignments. ...

If you follow me on Twitter , then I'm sure that you are well aware that I attend the National CUE Conference in Palm Springs last week (#CUE16). I've been a member of CUE for the last two years and attended conferences and edcamps put on by its affiliate in the Central Valley, but this was the first time that I ever attended one of its national events. Representing Minarets at #cue16 :) #minaretsrocks #Mustangpride pic.twitter.com/530iMrN0Yd — Kaitlin Morgan (@missmorgan810) March 17, 2016 To put it simply, #cue16 was like the CVCUE Conferences and GAFE Summits that I have attended, but on steroids. Everyone was there for the same reasons: to learn new tools and techniques for the classroom, to network and collaborate with fellow teachers, and to share their excitement and enthusiasm for edtech, teaching, and learning. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous that I would be lonely since I was the only one attending from my school, but these shared inte...