Connected Educators!

Last weekend I was privileged to attend the Ottawa GAFE summit.  It was an honor to meet with colleagues whom I already connect and learn with as well as meeting Canadian and international educators whom enhanced my technological skills and confirmed classroom learning process.

I recommend Kern Kelley, Jim Sill and Monica Martinez for international presenter on technology.  I attended Julie Millan's session on For, As, Of Learning: Using Google Apps to Integrate Assessment Practices to which I connected to her presentation and gave me the boost and excitement of confirming what I practice in class with my students before my presentation on  How GAPPS Support Thinking and Transparency of learning joined by Cathryn Wake for English Junior and Primary samples.

The reason I choose to only add links to my whole presentation is because I believe to only speak to real evidence of students' thinking. Most of the process that I spoke to, I have been developing for three years now and that I continue to enhance with my students and find a purpose for empowering students' reflection and giving them a chance to speak to their learning process and their thinking.

I also spoke to the" seeing and hearing" of the students' voice when collecting evidence of learning with students for their parents. I had a Google doc during the presentations that had links from the past years to the present showing 'the how' and 'the what' of students' voice and empowering growth through digital portfolios.

Thanks to Cathryn Wake for joining in and showing her application from last years' Grade four students and tempting Google with the Gr 1's. Thanks to Natalie MacDonald for sharing all of the Grade one digitable collaboration with Jennifer Flinn. Thanks also to all who attended and their feedback. Thanks to Jennifer King for staying after her presentation and her feedback while presenting.

I would also like to thank Karen McEvoy for inviting me to be part of Learning Connections and evolving through the years with the skills of learning and being a connected educator by sharing, exploring and reflecting with colleagues on my learning process through technology from my students.

On my twitter connection today I came across this tweet by Tom Whitby.It is true that as educators we need to have a mindset of learning, collaborating, reflecting to become a conceptual teacher focusing on the process of learning than the product of learning and using technology when appropriate for teaching and learning.

Connectedness for an educator must be a mindset for learning. w/o it, Tech is just a bunch of bells and whistles. @LynneOakvik #Edchat #ce14
— Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby) October 10, 2014