My newest favorite~ Buncee

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend Superior Tech 4 Teachers in Clearwater and it was fabulous! First there was an opening keynote with Bryan L. Miller and Katrina Keene and the top tech toys.  There was an entire table full of tech toys/tools to use in the classroom. Really there were 2 tables and I had to control myself from creating my Christmas Wish List.

 I was so lucky to win a @Tiggly Words software for 1st grade and when school starts back I will be sure to get a kid's point of view of the fun!

I spent the rest of the day in the Robotics and Coding Workshop where we learned more in depth about code.org-yippee all signed up for my class so more to come about that too.  We were exposed and got our hands on just about everything to do with Coding and Robotics and it was amazing as much as it was overwhelming.  No worries the wheels are turning and plans are being put into motion...

     The next day started off with an Opening Key Note from Brad Waid.  He was amazing and so insightful.  He really made me think about the generational gap in particular technology and the internet.  Technology has really changed over the past years but what about classrooms? Does the classroom really look very different over the past 50 years? rows, teacher up front...

He showed some pretty inspirational videos and had the crowd in tears as well as laughing out loud.  

How lucky was I to get a photo with Brad Waid and Kevin Honeycutt? Seriously #edheros here!

 Sessions were tough to choose because there were so many good ones and I jus wished I had some more teachers from our school so we could split and conquer.  Do you know Kayla Delzer, also known as Top Dog Teaching.  She is amazing!  So very personable, down to Earth, cute as can be and just plain lovable!  My favorite quote from her was that most days we are a hot mess riding the struggle bus! Seriously how accurate is she?

Of course one of my most favorite people in the world, Stacey Simpson @simpsonsuperstars knows her and we had to take a selfie.  Check that off my Bucket List-meeting another #edhero

 Explain Everything is one of my favorite apps and I do believe it would get 5 out of 5 stars from most of my firsties too.  Jennifer Baselice gave an excellent session on the benefits and ease of using the app in the classroom for flipped learning as well as interactively in the classroom with math students.  Lucky me I won a 3 month license for the new Collaborative Explain Everything.  I can not wait to try it out and taking bits and pieces from those around.  I guess I will have to blog about that too, I will be BUSY...

Book Creator is another favorite app not only for me but my firsties.  Anissa Labrador shared some examples of first graders and high school students collaborating on a shared book that even made it to iTunes.  My Pet Monster started with the younger students drawing monsters and writing stories about them.  The high school students then digitized the monsters and they were too cute, pretty true to the original.  The cutest part-the younger students read their stories.  Seriously a collaborative effort that made serious memories for all involved.  

Remember those tech toys from earlier well there was a Tope Tech Tools session.  This Padcaster in the photo is the #1 on my wish list-seriously it is the same quality as those roving news vans.  I even have the portable green screen ready for some excited adventures this upcoming year.

You might have noticed the title of the blog post is my new favorite-Buncee.  What is Buncee? Only the most amazing presentation tool to hit teachers. Did you see the slide way at the top right under the title?  The is a Buncee I created to give highlights from ST4T and there are links?!? Did you see the dancing taco?  I can't wait to learn more and share this resource this upcoming year.  The fabulous Amber, @Edtechamber presented a session on getting on the #Buncee Bus.  Here I got a special one on one mini session of all the features Buncee has to offer.  There were 20 people sitting on the floor to hear the session-the most packed one of the sessions I attended.

 

This is Claire and I think we are going to be good Buncee friends.  She is in the area and has tons of ideas of how to use Buncee to integrate technology into lessons and daily routines. Loved hearing her  sorties about her own kids and Buncee and she shared examples.

 This is Buncee's CEO , Marie Arturi, telling how Buncee came to be.  Amazing and I know with the crew I met she has all the right people in place to make Buncee your favorite too.

ST4T was such an amazing experience.  There were so many sessions to choose from and my wheels are turning about presenting next year.  I need to start collecting samples and stories now to prepare and hope to share the same stage as some of my #edheros.

Father's Day 2016

Today is Father's Day 2016 but we celebrated back in May with our Wright's Rippers family.  My dad cut wood blocks for the kids to paint and then made them into "Chip off the Old Block" paper weights. Too cute right?  We served donuts and orange juice and even sang a song thanks to Ms. Clutter.  My favorite was the Dad movie.  The class used the iPads to create a book in Book Creator.  Some drew pictures, took selfies, used Draw & Tell, or any other app they could create with.  They wrote from their heart about the things they like to do best with dad or just a quick I love you from some.  However they wanted to express their love was just the best piece ever.  Take a watch below.