Teach Beyond the Buzzwords

This year I was lucky enough to head to the National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) national conference in St. Louis. This was my second year attending and getting to present. Jenny O'Sullivan and I presented our Green Screen + AR session to highlight the First Grade Garden project. Then we had Suzette Milu join us to share how we integrate tech into science. We discussed the importance of meaningful integration to increase engagement and document mastery of content. If you are interested, you can check out our NSTA presentations and materials for  Bringing Student Creativity to Life in the Elementary Science Classroom  and Transforming Your Science Classroom Through Technology  at bit.ly/nsta19 . Every time I go to NSTA, I realize how much I DO NOT know. I can definitely learn SO much about good science and STEM integration. I definitely don't do enough STEM lessons in my first grade classroom so, these last two years, I chose to attend sessions that focus on j...

Wow! I cannot believe it. Two weeks from now I will be traveling to Chicago. I am lucky enough to be attending ISTE for the second year in a row and wait for it... PRESENTING for the second year as well. Now let me be honest here... I am only presenting one poster session, but come on, this is ISTE for goodness sake! A poster means 3 hours of sharing ideas with like-minded educators who, in most cases, understand my crazy ideas. Jenny and I at FETC in 2017 My journey to ISTE really started about three years ago when a friend and colleague of mine, Jenny , asked if I would be interested in presenting with her at a tech conference in Orlando, Florida. For the last four years we have collaborated on a really cool project called Our First Grade Gardens, a cross-curricular project that includes the use of augmented reality to put students inside of their painting (for more on that go to Jenny’s blog ), and Jenny thought we should share our idea with a larger audience. Of...