Connecting Across the World

I love that even though I live in a small town of 1,000 people, I can connect with people all over the world. Just the other day I was connecting with an educator in Australia. Our conversation started from a retweet of my session materials at the TIES 2013 technology conference by a fellow Minnesota educator. I presented a breakout session on the use of Google Forms in education and shared the link via Twitter. I am sharing my Twitter story with you via Storify

I look forward to connecting with her in the near future! If you are a current Google Forms user and would like to share your materials please do so in the comments below. If you are new to Google Drive and would like to learn more about Google Forms here is the a link to my materials tinyurl.com/ties13gf and feel free to connect with me on Twitter @MrsKalthoff .

Reflection

I met an intriguing person while attending #Ties13 . He travels the world and speaks on different topics but the two that stood out to me the most are

• What are we doing with technology integration in our schools to make it  “what is best for kids?”
• What does your your personal digital footprint look like?

I attended a few of his break out sessions and a quickly jotted down a few more points that I have been reflecting on over the past two weeks.

• How are you different than anyone else?
• Am I empowering teachers or am I creating learners who are dependent upon me?
• Students don't wait for a workshop on blogging, they Google it and figure it out.
• Should we all use the same tools or should teachers pick what is best for them?
• By using the same tools teachers are able to help each other and share resources with one another. 

I will be expanding on each of these ideas in future blog posts.
If you want to learn more about him you can visit his blog The Principal of Change.