On Friday, my classmates and I had the opportunity to attend the 2014 Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) conference in Grand Rapids. I was impressed with the number of educators who participated and a bit overwhelmed at the number of sessions to choose from. I ended up attending three one-hour sessions: "Tips and Tricks for Organizing Your G-mail," "Flipping Your Math Classroom, Grades 7-12," and "Effective Strategies and Tools for the Differentiated Math Class." I had initially planned to attend a session about project-based learning, but it took a while to navigate the complicated set-up of the conference, and it was full by the time I arrived. At that point, I decided on the G-mail session that was next door. Each session provided some interesting information and sparked some ideas for my teaching practice.
The "Tips and Tricks for Organizing Your G-mail" session was not directly related to my teaching practice, but I did come away with some ideas about how to filter my e-mail as it comes in. When I am teaching full time, I plan to create a filter that sends all e-mails from parents into one folder, from students into another, and from administration into yet another. I did not know that you could create these filters just by knowing an e-mail extension or by using a few key words, and I think it will be helpful to have my inbox sort itself before I see it. My G-mail is already pretty organized with labels and stars, so this was the main take away from that session.
The "Flipping Your Math Classroom, Grades 7-12" session was probably my favorite of the three. I have been intrigued by the idea of flipping my math classroom ever since I first heard about it last semester, and this session provided another example of this model in use. I was interested to hear about the note sheets that the presenters require their students to complete as proof that they watch the videos at home. They also discussed how they use stations during class to address the fact that some students will not have watched them, some will have watched them but have a lot of questions about the material, and some will be ready to tackle application problems. Their description of this set-up had me thinking about how the flipped model can be a great tool for differentiating instruction. Finally, they provided a list of several tools for making and posting the videos, as well as using online quizzes as pre-assessments that the students complete after watching the videos the night before class.
The "Effective Strategies and Tools for the Differentiated Math Class" session was definitely interesting, but it was probably the least applicable to my own teaching practice. The presenter was from a school with very different demographics and teaching challenges than my field placement. As such, I felt that a lot of the strategies she discussed would be less effective in my classroom. For example, she uses a lot of online math games so that her students, who range from 2nd-grade to 9th-grade level in math, can all be working on something relevant. While the limited data that she shared with us seemed to support this strategy, I do not think that it would be appropriate in my classroom.
Overall, attending the conference was a solid educational experience for me. I think I would have gotten more out of it if I were deeper into my student teaching or already teaching full time. I sometimes find it difficult to think about how I could use these types of ideas in my own classroom when I am working within the constraints of my mentor teacher's set-up. I think that having more freedom to try different things and experiment with various activities and tools will open a lot of doors for me in the future. Perhaps I will get a chance to attend MACUL 2015 as a first year teacher!
