Trip to ISTE

I did it! I just registered for #iste2015. 

How exciting! 

I am looking forward to the trip. 

Now I have a lot of question.

For those of you who have been to ISTE in the past:

• Who should I make sure I see?
• What vendors are you looking forward to checking out?
• What have been your favorite sessions to attend?
• Do you go to only sessions or do you take time to go to the vendor area? If you do go, how much time do you spend there?
• Have you volunteered? If so, what did you do and would you do it again?
• I love my shoes and tech T-shirts, but what other things did you pack with you?

For those of you who have been to Philadelphia:

• What should I make sure I see while in town?
• Any food that I should not miss out on?
• How is the airport? How much time do I need to add to get through security and check in on the way back?

Any tips on:

• Money, it is very expensive to go to ISTE!  I have received a $200 scholarship but would love more. Where do you get grants/scholarships to attend conferences?
• I want to meet my PLN in person. What are some meet ups I should be aware of?

I am super excited to go!! If you are going let me know so we can connect!! 

23 Mobile things 4. Keeping Up

Keeping up, what a great title. It can be very hard to keep up with everything. I think that using a service like Feedly is a great way to keep up without getting overwhelmed.

The Internet is full of so much information. It can be overwhelming to navigate. I like to learn from people I know and have a connect with them allowing me to ask questions and get a deeper understanding. One way I do this is through following blogs by real teachers. I use the service called "Feedly" to manage all of the blogs I follow. Feedly allows me to organize blogs, do a quick read and easily share out.

Inside of my Feedly I house around 35 blogs. I have five categories that each of those 35 blogs fit into.

EdTech
This is where I put blogs that deal with education and technology. A few that I have here include Edudemic, Free Technology for Teachers and our blog The Techie Teachers.

Leadership
This is where I put blogs that deal with leadership. I got the chance to meet George Couros at the TIES 2013 conference. His blog feels very personal and gives you a lot to reflect on. He is also very active on Twitter. If you want to know more have something to say you should Tweet at him, I bet he will get back to you.

Olympics
Tis the season. I work with a teacher who has a daughter at the Olympics. Before she left to cheer her on we set up a blog so that she can share her experience!

People I know
Here I put people who I have meet at conferences. I met the top dog teacher via twitter at the ties conference and had the opportunity to meet her in person at the iSummit.
http://topdogteaching.blogspot.com/ 

Technology
This is just technology in general. It has nothing to do with education or teaching, but everything to do with technology. I like to follow TechCrunch and Lifehacker.

My nightly routine is to brush my teeth, crawl into bed, grab my cell phone and scroll through my feedly stream. If it find something that I want to read later I add it to my "Pocket." Pocket is a service that allows me to read online articles offline. This is handy if you are going on a flight or staying somewhere with out wifi.  I can also share these posts through Twitter via feedly. I have picked Twitter as my favorite sharing tool but there is a list of seven other options if Twitter isn't your thing.

What is your blog? Share it with me so that I can learn with you!

Organized Chaos!

If you have read some of our previous posts you understand how we value our Personal Learning Network (PLN). There are so many different platforms available to connect with others online from all over the world. It is even better when we are able to meet people from our PLN in person. I just got back from the iSummitMN a little of a week ago and I am looking forward to the ITEM conference up in Duluth on March 15. My friend Andrea and I will be running the unconference in the afternoon.

Back to managing your tools for your PLN. I use HootSuite to watch hashtags (#) , follow certain groups of people and post to multiple accounts.

Have you heard of Twitter Chats? Here is a list of Twitter chats by day of the week and time
bit.ly/officialchatlist 
If you are solely using the Twitter application, these chats will be hard to follow. HootSuite allows you to make a stream following a hashtag of your choice. Sunday night at 7pm Minnesota educators are using the hashtag #MNlead to discuss leadership in education. If you want to follow along in the conversation, I would recommend using a service such as HootSuite. 

Typically when you participate in a Twitter chat there is a moderator or two who lead the conversation. They will post a question and  people will respond to the question. To stay organized and make it easier to follow the moderator will use some thing along the lines of Q1) or Q1-  which means "Question 1" and when others respond they will use A) or A1- which means "Answer to question1". If someone posts something of interest, that you would like to comment on, you can reply to the tweet. It is important for you to remember to include the hashtag so that others in the chat will see your comment.

Here is an example of how hashtags, questions and posts at people are used

In my HootSuite account I have multiple pages and each page has a different purpose.

• One page has the top people I follow and interact with. This allows me to easily navigate their Twitter posts and interact with them.
•  Another page is just for information about me. I see when someone Direct Message (DM) me, posts at me (@), and a stream of new followers. 
• My third page is a page of conference hashtags (#). I love to connect with others via Twitter while conferences are going on. If I am in a great session I will Tweet out what I am learning, when I attend EdCamps I typically tweet my notes for the day, and if I am leading Professional Development (PD) I will share my resources. 
• My last page brings us back to the Twitter chats. I went through the list of daily chats and chose one chat per day. If I ever have some down time, I will got to this page and read through previous chats or contribute to a live chat. (Picture above)

My Personal Learning Network has influenced me immensely as a teacher and learner. I have connected with so many wonderful people over the past few years, whom I would have never had the chance to connect with.

Link to picture

Call to action! Have you participated in a Twitter Chat? If not, try one out. I bet you will learn a thing or two! 

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 .