Crazy 'bout Conferences!

The whirlwind of September is over and now the fall educational conference season is in full swing.  So much I'd love to learn and only so many conferences I can get to.  How to choose?

Two great conferences that run every October for Thames Valley District School Board Educators are LitCon and iCon.  These are (alas!) only for Teachers in our Board, but they are awesome!  They both run on Saturdays in October and they are both free!  Yes, FREE!  I don't have to get permission to go from my Principal, I don't have to book a Supply Teacher, I don't have to prep the work for the days I will be away, it's nearby - so no travel costs or hotel room bookings, and it costs me nothing but my time on a Saturday?  I must give this some serious consideration.  This is time I would normally spend on laundry, housework and fall yard work...hmmmmmm?  Do I want to pass on these household chores for a day of amazing presentations and connecting with colleagues I rarely get a chance to see? 

START THE CAR!  START THE CAR!

LitCon is the annual TVDSB Literacy Conference organised by the Literacy Co-ordinators and their Conference Team.  This year it was held at Montcalm S.S. in London and ran from 8:00-4.  There were all kinds of book and vendor displays in the cafeteria, which for me is almost as exciting as the sessions.  This might be the only cost to me for the Conference.  I simply cannot leave without a book or 2...or 7 (don't tell my husband!) and I got some great books for my classroom and two to add to my professional reading.

The keynote speaker this year was Dr. David Booth, Literacy Expert and Professor Emeritus at OISE, University of Toronto.  His talk was about how literacy instruction has changed since he was a boy from a very Euro Centric Reader to looking at Literacy as an all day learning experience.  He also discussed the importance of igniting the enjoyment of reading in students by helping them find texts that have relevance to them.  There were lots of laughs in his presentation, but lots of points that hit home to me as an educator as well.  He talked about relationships and the importance of building community in our classrooms and schools.  He shared his Universal Truth in education, by reminding us that we all (students, parents and teachers) look up and see the same moon each night, so we need to not only be respectful of the differences we all bring to school, but to celebrate them as well.   Dr. Booth stayed at the Conference all day to talk to teachers and be a part of the learning.  I had the opportunity to chat with him and he agreed to come on the I Wish I Knew EDU Podcast.  We recorded last week, so if you want to hear more, watch for that episode to air on www.voiced.ca in November. 

A quick chat with Literacy Co-ordinators Heidi Solway and Adria Killian

The sessions were an hour long and were on all areas of literacy, from elementary to secondary, including special education, technology integration, library learning commons and more.  I attended a great session put together by our Special Education team on teaching literacy to students with Developmental Disabilities.  There were great examples and "how to" ideas for making books more tactile and using different iPad apps like epic.com, RazKids, or Book Creator to help our students have greater access to literacy.  Dawn Telfer had two great sessions on great picture books to use for different themes in the classroom and how to access our online Library catalogue to borrow books from other schools in our board.

Making Literacy accessible session with Special Education TOSAs

Dawn Telfer sharing how to access TVDSB library collections

A pizza lunch was included (free lunch too?!)  and we had time to browse the vendor displays and connect with others.  The day was capped off with the distribution of a huge cache of door prizes (lots of books, and other cool stuff).  I didn't win one, but was excited for those who did!  I'm glad the day was over...my brain was full.

iCon is our Board technology conference.   I believe they mentioned that this was year 13 for this great event.  This year the conference was at Clarke Road Secondary School in London.  We started with a Techie Breakie - some vendors, but mostly TVDSB educators sharing different robots, coding applications and tech ideas in an informal setting.  We were all at tables in the foyer of the building and attendees could check out what we brought, chat and share ideas before the main conference got underway. I brought my Blue Bot and tactile reader to demonstrate, but there was plenty to see and play with while enjoying our morning java and treats.

Always great to see Tech Co-ordinator David Carruthers. Here we are at the Techie Breakie!

iCon tries to keep to a half day schedule to honour the time that Teachers are giving up on a Saturday, so there is no Keynote speaker.  After remarks by the Superintendent and Thanks from the Organisers (our fabulous Technology Co-ordinators) we were off to the sessions.  Sessions ranged from
G-Suite for beginners, to coding, various tech applications, using Twitter with your classroom and pretty much all things EDU-techie.  I attended a great session by Derek Tangredi on the Microbit.  Coding these little devices is relatively easy and they can be used to create all kinds of things, like pedometers, etc. 

Checking in with Derek Tangredi!

I was presenting on the different ways you can use technology to help organise and for students to create with in Genius Hour Projects, titled: "Geek N Out with Genius Hour".  If you are interested in this, check out my presentation slide deck at: http://bit.ly/GeekNOut. I did two sessions and was excited to have both sessions full.  Hope I didn't sound like a deranged squirrel, or bore any of them when I talked about using Google applications, padlet, trello, and so many others with Passion Projects.  iCon finished up with great tech prizes and the opportunity to share our learning using a FlipGrid or through the Twitter Hashtag for the day.

Both Conferences were amazing and my most profound thanks to their organisers who do a fabulous job and an enormous amount of work putting these together and keeping them free for us to attend.  I can't be the only one who is excited about these opportunities.  Both Saturday Conferences were full - with over 400 attendees at each.

I can only come up with two downsides to attending these two conferences.

1.  I enjoyed presenting, but then I don't get to attend the other sessions.  iCon makes this a little easier, by creating a shared folder of all the presenters slide shows with all the presenters and attendees.  This way I can have a look at some of the things I'm interested in and contact the presenters directly if I have any questions.

2.  The fall season is full of great Conferences to attend.  By choosing these two, I missed a few others that I would have loved to attend.  LitCon was the same day as an EdTechCamp that the York Regional Board was holding and iCon was the same day as the Digital Citizenship Summit in Toronto.  Thanks to Twitter, and the great sharing that folks at these events do, I was able to catch a few things that I missed.  I know a lot of great things at the DigCitSummit were also recorded and shared by www.voiced.ca - so over the next few weeks, I'll be checking in on these recordings. 

I'm interested to hear if other boards have events like these, and what are some of the Conferences that my PLN love to attend?  Please share in the comments: I'm always interested in new opportunities to learn!

This week I'm excited to be attending the Bring It Together (aka BIT18) Conference in Niagara Falls.  This event is put together by ECOO - The Educational Computing Organisation of Ontario and is one of my favourites.  I'm presenting on Thursday on Connecting Your Classroom to the World, but I'm more excited to see the other presentations I've signed up for, the Orca documentary that will be premiered on Wednesday night, and of course, to catch up with some of my EDU pals, and meet some of my PLN IRL!  I hope to see you there! After that, I'm taking a bit of a "conference break" - the busy holiday season is coming and if I'm away from home much more, my hubby is going to start asking who I am as I come in the front door.