Schools of the Future Conference

I attended a Schools of the Future Conference today. I always enjoy meeting up with fellow educators I haven't seen in awhile and to make new connections. The keynote speaker was awesome; I've been following Chris Lehmann on Twitter (@chrislehmann) for awhile and saw him in Atlanta at the ISTE Conference when he shared what to expect the following year when Philadelphia was the host. I purposely chose to attend today so I could hear his keynote. I certainly was not disappointed, and his passion for public education and teaching kids to prepare for their future was inspiring.

I was invited to participate in a poster session on the topic, "Using Technology to Connect with Our School Community." I envisioned the poster sessions at ISTE where there is a large area and lots of groups sharing their projects or their products. The atmosphere is exciting as each person or group - many of them students - are proud and anxious to share their projects. I was impressed and recall that I wished our students could have those kinds of opportunities.

So I prepared a poster board and a Google Presentation with links and QR codes and had a slide show running on my computer. Well, the poster sessions certainly did not draw a crowd, but I did have the opportunity to share with a few people. It was disappointing, but as I reflected, I realized that this whole experience was not a waste of time. As I was working on the slide show and poster board, I realized how much our school is using technology to connect with our parents and our community. It was difficult to choose just a few projects to share because there are so many examples of different ways we are sharing what is going on in our classrooms and at our school. So I decided that I should share the link to the slide show.  I'm sure our staff would be proud of what we're doing at Hale Kula to connect with our school community. Here's the link to the presentation, "Using Technology to Connect with Our School Community." It's just a small portion of the great things our teachers are doing to connect with our families and community.