I know I ended last year with a quote from a Michelle Branch song, and it is only fitting that we start the year off with one too! This one happens to be from when she formed a band called “The Wreckers” with Jessica Harp. This band, for their time, was awesome and I still listen to the live album all the time. 

My, Oh My Look How the Time Flied

For many of you the summer was a welcomed reprieve from the hard school year. You took solace in knowing that we have made it through the toughest year of your teaching career, and you are still here. For a few of you, you took on the challenge of summer school, in person and remote, others you spent the time growing your skills as a teacher. And for some of you, you spent time lounging by the pool, ocean, lake, river or wherever you could find water…except for the rain, there was a lot of rain it seemed like. Looking at last year and reflecting on what was good and what was tough is important and hopefully you took some time to do that too!

My, Oh My! Look How the World Changes

(Yes, I know I skipped a line but hey, I need to make this post work!) This summer marked a season of change, Schoology is officially the districts LMS, so long UC we barely knew yah. We have moved on from Discovery Education (not the textbooks, the other part) and we are welcoming Nearpod to the district. Also, we have sadly lost our teammate for the last five years, Brendan to new pastures (I’ll still going to text him about fantasy football), and we spent all summer looking for the best person to add to our team and we found that person.

Starting on the first day students are back, we will welcome Christian to our team. You’ll learn more about it from him in an upcoming podcast episode. On top of that, we also added to our team a brand-new position for computer science education. Make sure you welcome Rachel Miller (Chouinard) from Liberty. Also, in an upcoming podcast episode you’ll learn what this new CS Supervisor position entails. I am sure you will see a lot of them in future.

My, Oh My!

 For me, a professional highlight of the summer was presenting at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. They are a group of educators from all corners of this world who come together to further technology and education to help improve learning for all schools. It was such an honor to present and with it being virtual it was great. I was able to share all the wonderful things we are doing in this district, since my presentation was on promoting what teachers are doing across the school district through Podcasts and Blogs. 

I left ISTE inspired and can’t wait to work with teachers to use the things I learned. When it comes to professional development opportunities, ISTE is one the best options out there for learning about technology in the classroom. They are looking at doing a hybrid conference next year, so you could go virtually, or you could go to the conference in New Orleans! 

Before we wrap up this post, let’s take a quick glance at what the future with Blogs and Podcasts holds. Here are some topics that we will be covering over the next number of weeks. 

• Parent Portal Tools
• ISTE highlights 
• Schoology Updates and Highlights 
• Microsoft Updates and Highlights 
• Personalized Learning 
• Adobe Spark (awesome, free program) 
• Anchor for Podcasting 
• CSforAll Tools, Lessons and so much more 
• Gamification in the Classroom. 
• Taking the Best of Last Year and Applying it to This Year 
• Music in the Classroom 
• Flipgrid Updates 

We are gearing up for our best year yet and we’re excited to share with you everything that we have learned and are doing! I can’t leave you without the music video for the through line of this blog. If you are looking for a good song, check it out below. Leave us a note in the comments with all the things you’re looking forward to this year!

Check out a music video for the inspiration of this post. My, Oh My!