Today’s teachers are under immense pressure to “innovate” and “transform” their practice to meet the demands of the 21st century. However, they also need support in order to understand how they might augment their instruction, curriculum, and classroom environment. Whether you are a tech savvy teacher informally coaching colleagues, a formal tech coach, or even an administrator, you can play a critical role to provide that support. Come learn strategies for how you can be confidante & cheerleader, advocate & ally, researcher & detective….and more! Participants will learn new tools, work through scenarios, and develop strategies that they can take back to their schools to increase teacher and student success. 

Laptops, iPads, Chromebooks, and even smart phones, have the potential to support struggling learners and provide opportunities for enrichment to all learners. In this workshop, we will explore how various tools and apps can facilitate differentiation and personalization and create rich learning experiences that meet the needs of ALL students. Using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a framework to guide our exploration, we will examine how technology can be leveraged to both scaffold and augment student learning. In particular, we will focus on how technology might support reading, writing, and note-taking, as well as provide students with multimedia options and various choices for how they demonstrate their understanding. During this intensive, hands-on workshop, participants will have abundant time to explore sites, tools, apps, and strategies that can be applied to any device – and any classroom – in order to help students develop into master learners.

G Suite for Education and Google Chrome not only facilitate creative and collaborative learning opportunities for students but also provide amazing tools for curating and publishing student work. In this hands-on workshop, we will explore best practices for using Google Apps on laptops and Chromebooks. From innovative uses of the core Google tools, to creating multimedia with new Chrome apps and extensions, we will discover powerful and innovative ways to empower students to demonstrate and share their learning.

By moving beyond simply digitizing work and replacing paper with Google Apps for Education, the kind of work students can create and the method by which they explore ideas can move beyond linear text in a digital form. Attendees in the workshop will walk away with a creative approach to leveraging the two core Google Apps for Education tools (Docs and Slides) as well as concrete examples, digital templates, and a framework to begin the process of integrating these ideas into their classroom or school.

The Teaching History with Technology Workshop is an intensive hands-on environment for History and Social Studies educators. During this intensive workshop, participants will explore practical, dynamic, and creative ways to use technology in the classroom to enhance their curricula and provide students with unique opportunities to create original content to demonstrate their understanding. The workshop examines innovative ideas, effective techniques and thoughtful approaches for incorporating web tools, mobile devices, apps and emerging technologies into History and Social Studies curricula.