What I learned at MPTCA

It was a good one!  Managed to attend 8 of 8 sessions, although my stomach didn't appreciate it, my brain did!

Rick Wormeli (@rickwormeli) I attend his opening and closing keynotes.  It was great way to start the conference with a few laughs and great reminders to take back to the classroom. Some things that I will take back from the opening session:

Teachers do not play fair, students need to know the target to be able to hit it.  Why are tests kept secret?

Deviating from the path, sometimes produces the best results.

Because I said so = eat your spinach assignment!

And remember this about Rick...

During the closing keynote, who could forget the Sound of Music clip!  What an awesome way to explain differentiation.  Make sure that you follow Rick on Twitter and check out YouTube, he has tons of great clips, like this one.

Vanessa and the SMART session!

SMART Board in Humanities was next on my hit list, facilitated by twitter friend Vanessa Cassie.  She was fabulous, as usual, and even though I had to skip out early she gave the group these two fabulous ideas:

1. Hiding the text bubble in a political cartoon, allowing students to brainstorm what would be there and then erasing to reveal.  I created my own here for those that are interested in trying it out and learning how to create their own.
2. Using dice to create a story prompt.  Using the image and text dice and have dice representing character, setting and object.  Allow student to role to create their own writing prompt.  Again you can see my example here to try out!

Nicole Moodling!

Intro to Moodle was facilitated by Nicole Gilles and attended by all three Grande Prairie Districts!  It will be so awesome to have a common language and to be able to easily share and collaborate.  You can find all the session information here.

What I loved about using Twitter, again, is that I have my notes from each session! See the #mptca twitter search here.