It is good to have lists as Angela Maiers spoke about eloquently in her Day One keynote but never let the urgency of a “to do” let you forget about the importance of a “to be” list. While the fabulousness of the conference is still freshly brewing in my mind I would like to blog about the top ten highlights from my iPad Summit Experience.
1- Day One Keynote- Angela Maiers set the tone for the conference by talking about the “killer APP of the 21st century being love.” She brought up the point that the “smartest person in the 21st century is the room.” This theme was evident throughout the conference. Not only could you feel the synergy within the individual rooms but the collective running stream of consciousness of #ettipad posts on Twitter throughout the conference showed us just how brilliant the room can be.
2- Day One- Fluid Math Presentation- YEEHAW!! After hearing my colleagues who teach AP Calculus groan and moan that all of the math APPS on the iPad are geared towards the elementary level I final have something to silence them. This APP will drastically change the way that math is taught in high school classrooms all over the world.
3- Day One SAMR Cheer- As part of the session that I led on iPads being a game changer in the lives of my at-risk students, I talked about the SAMR model. I led the crowd in the SAMR cheer – there is something very passion stirring when you are leading a room full of educators in a shout out to Ruben P. Imagine my delight when I found out he will be joining us in Boston in November.
4- Day One Lunch Time Keynote with Greg Kulowiec- I must admit that I did not retain as much of this one as I should have. I eat lunch at 11:00 every day as a high school teacher so getting assigned 2nd lunch in Atlanta made my blood sugar drop. However, I did retain the following golden nuggets from his lunch chat “The iPad in school is like putting a jet engine on a stagecoach. We’re adding the best of the new to an old paradigm.” “Don’t go into APP overload…” “Focus on the VERBS and not the nouns!” and “Is collaboration something that we only give lip service to?” Greg’s presentations always connect to the big ideas and overarching implications of all that we do in education.
5- Day One- Bring on the Bling- Smita Kolhatkar and Carolyn Tuomy showed as all the fabulous ways that their elementary students are using APPS. It increased all of our APPetities.
Day Two
6- A keynote with the South Side Chicago girls who killed it. My personal highlight was when one them talked about redefinition being the “milk and cookies” of the SAMR model. This Chicago team inspired as a whole and they went on to lead individual session about their specific content areas throughout the rest of the day.
7- I had the pleasure of attending a workshop taught by Reshan Richards, my fellow member of the ADE Class of 2013 and the co-creator of Explain Everything. He spoke about qualitative formative assessment. This session helped shift my philosophy about formative assessment. I realized that most of the formative assessment that I do in quantitative and starting Monday I am going to challenge myself to gather more qualitative pre-assessment data in order to fully triangulate my practice as an educator.
8- Next on the list comes from the same workshop. Reshan had me participate as a volunteer Brady girl to show the magic of Explain Everything then we broke up into groups and were given a differentiated task to complete in the EE app. Kudos to Reshan for getting his audience up out our chairs and actively engaged in the learning process.
9- In his lunchtime Keynote Tom Daccord made my head spin. He introduced the concept of Augmented Reality with apps like Layer and Aurasma. As I told him in the session I was overestimated – in a good way. As a teacher who has a visual teaching style this newly introduced technology will have long lasting implications in my own practice. As I tweeted in the session this technology makes QR codes look like a VCR. I already found a way to use the technology to make my Hanging w/Mrs. Pepe at the iPad Summit QR Code Bumper Stickers turn into a video of people boxing!!! Talk about something that will throw my students into a state of cognitive dissonance. Shout out to Tom Daccord thank so much for your “creative agency.”
10- It a pleasure to end the conference listening to my fellow ADE Class of 2013 Michelle Cordy speak passionately about the concept of the iPads: Meaning, Participation, and Democracy. She eloquently speaks about a paradigm shift in education: “I don’t teach content anymore I teach context.” On a more humorous note she asked us to use our “crap detection” powers when we work with technology. Thank-you for ending the conference on a high class intellectual note Michelle!!
So that’s all folks, that’s my list, see everyone in November in Boston. My APPetite for the next iPad Summit is already starting to grow.
mrspepedotcom 
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