KYSTE Day 1

The Kentucky Society for Technology in Education Conference (KYSTE) is in full swing! We are so fortunate to have the opportunity to host this gathering here in Bullitt County this year. Monday and Tuesday consisted of a lot of room set up and preparing and it all came together today at 11:00 when everyone started rolling in, visiting the vendor floor, and having lunch. The first activity of the day consisted of lunch and a Keynote Address by a representative from the Kentucky Secreatary of State's Office. He reminded us of what is out there that our students face online each and everyday. Teaching them to be responsible citizens online is just as important as teaching them to be responsible citizens in all aspects of life. Trey Grayson's office is willing to come into schools in Kentucky and conduct assemblies for students on the Prevention of Cyberbullying.

After the lunch and the keynote, the sessions began. My co-worker and I presented our presentation on the use of the eInstruction clickers in various formats. I talked about this in a post a few days ago. The session went wonderfully with good participation and discussion of the uses of these in various aspects in different schools and districts. Our Kentucky eInstruction reps, Keith Frank and Matt Wheeler supported our session so for the last session of the day we went to support their presentation. Click Here for a PDF version of our presentation. We used this PPT to guide us through the various sites as we demonstrated the various uses of the clickers.

In the last session for today Matt and Keith stepped out of salesman mode and just conducted a wonderful discussion with group about the basic aspects of equipping a room to connect students and teachers to the outside world to enhance instruction and learning. Great job to these guys.

We ended the day with a luau in spite of the storm. The food had to be moved outside but the skies finally cleared and we were able to go outside and enjoy some music and karaoke.

Looking forward to Day 2 tomorrow!

Have a great evening!

Susan

Week off Ending; KYSTE Coming

Well my first week of summer break is about to come to an end. It has been a good one and I've gotten caught up on cleaning and some other chores. We are working next week, but it won't be too much work really. We get to host our state tech conference here in Bullitt County. The KYSTE (Kentucky Society for Technology in Education) Conference is coming to North Bullitt High School next Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday the 17th, 18th, and 19th.

More information about the conference including session offerings, accomodations, etc. can be found by visiting the KYSTE website at www.kyste.org/conference.

I am looking forward to the presentation my colleague and I are doing entitled "Why Raise Your Hand When you Can Click a Button." Here is the description that I included in my presentation proposal:

This session will cover the versatile uses of student response systems. Using the eInstruction CPS "clickers", the presenters will show how to go beyond manually typing questions into the CPS software by using questions from various places to check student understanding of concepts. CPS clickers can be used within Study Island, ThinkLink (Discovery Education), History Alive, any other document or website that has questions already created, or even a question right off the tip of your tongue. These are wonderful opportunities to engage your students with bell ringer activities and common assessments and gets you out of grading papers all evening. Other uses of the CPS software will also be shown including attaching KET Encyclomedia/United Streaming clips within a question as well as the use of Examview.

I'm sure it will be a wonderful conference as always! If you are an educator join us if you can! Then after KYSTE comes the trip to DC for NECC..Can't wait for that!

Susan