I had to laugh about being chosen to present at this conference because my topic seemed underwhelming. The last day of school last year was the final day for the Request For Proposals for NYSCATE, and I thought that the most relevant NEW technology to talk about was Google Classroom. Google released Classroom after realizing that people were writing scripts for schools to help teachers send and receive work through Drive more easily. Classroom was released in beta mode to teachers on an application basis in the spring. Therefore, I decided I would commit this fall to trying it, then give a talk on "Google Classroom: An Early Adopter's View." At the end of August, they released it to the public! My "Early Adopter" view was now incorporating views from MANY other teachers and students in my school district! People who are not even tech savvy adopted the program!
I made a video about their experiences to share with the group of my session and it can be seen here:
I thought the session would not have many people in attendance. There were many things working against me such as the time on Sunday and the fact that I thought the program was so simple that people would have figured it out on their own already! I was thrilled that my session had standing room only and people were excited to learn more. They were engaged and many stuck around to give me some great feedback! One even picked up some of my tab at Dinosaur BBQ that night! It was a great experience to present, and I hope to get back and do it again another time.
I went alone to this conference, and ended up connecting with many wonderful educators whom I am thrilled to be connected with as a professional network moving forward.
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