Celebrating Failure in Rm 613

My feelings towards October. October is always a fun month; please note the sarcasm. Its the first month without any breaks or three-day weekends (at least in my district), the start of cold/flu season, and grades are due for the end of the first quarter. On top of that, I was also in the middle of my first semester of my Master's program, the new advisor for both CSF and NHS, and planning my #googleEI project that is scheduled for November. By the end of the month, I was stressed, exhausted, and completely drained, like so many teachers around the country. Unlike Octobers in the past, I got to finish the month by attending and presenting at #FallCUE up in American Canyon, CA.  I didn't have much time to get pumped and excited for the conference so I went up with my to do list weighing me down. But once the conference began, I immediately forgot about my stress and became re-energized by collaborating and sharing ideas with educators around the state. My highlights f...

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...

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...

Presentations are synonymous with teaching, especially during the NCLB era when I got my teaching credential. Without question, PowerPoint was an unspoken tool that every teacher needed to be competent in. So naturally I used PowerPoint all the time for my direct instruction. During my student teaching, however, I began to get bored with PowerPoint. My presentations seemed repetitive and boring to me, which  would mean it was incredibly boring for my students. I started desperately looking around for new templates, themes, backgrounds, anything that would jazz up my PowerPoints. Around that time, I had a classmate use this interesting presentation tool that was so fascinating. It would zoom in and out then flow from slide to slide. In all honesty, the information itself wasn't that interesting, but I was engaged because I wanted to see what would happen next. At the end of class, I found that it was Prezi . I forced myself to learn how to use it and tried using it a few times for...