#TMC17 Post 7: My Presentations

#TMC17 Post 7: My Presentations

When I went to my first TMC last year, I did not offer to present.  I wanted to take it all in and was a bit nervous about the whole thing.  After I attended, I knew I wanted to present this year and I took advantage of other conferences throughout the school year to practice and prepare for TMC.  I submitted two proposals:
Making Review and Practice Activities Fun   and  additional google slide
Our First Year Experiences with #VNPS, co-presenting with Kathy

As we got closer to TMC, the opportunity came up to present a My Favorite and I jumped on that too with:
What Else Can Google Slides Do?


I have included my links above.  They were a success, if I say so myself.  I was very prepared for my Friday morning My Favorite but when I went up to plug in the cord, my lovely computer froze.  Good thing I have had plenty of practice with technical difficulties in class and I wasn't too flustered.  Lisa Henry was a big help with smoothly transitioning to another My Favorite so I could reboot.  I shared two more uses for Google slides - creating a scrapbook (an idea from my colleage, Lorelle) about getting to know our students and creating an ebook for review for the midterm and final exams. 

My Review presentation was good.  I go from low tech to high tech and I need to freshen it up a bit because a lot of teachers have heard of Kahoot, Quizlet, and Quizizz now.  I introduced my low tech ones slowly and we had conversations about each.  It is different presenting at TMC rather than other conferences.  At others, I feel the need to sell what I have.  At TMC, I am sharing what I have and hoping my audience will contribute and teach me as well.  And, that happens!  It is more of a conversation than a lecture.  I love this!

And, the VNPS - vertical non-permanent surfaces.  Kathy and I made this our #1TMCthing last year.  We committed to making our room have VNPS and bought them with our own money.  We changed our teaching style and loved it so we wanted to share the goodness.  Kathy added that we should add a poll to our presentation to see where people with it.  Most of our audience had heard about it but no one was an "expert".  It was perfect.  We had them do an openmiddle problem to experience what it is like to work in a group of 3.  I showed them video of it in action in my class and we noticed and wondered.  We showed the set up of how we transformed our room.  We share Alex Overwick and Peter Lilijedahl's work.  We shared some of the links to the problems we did in class this year.  And, we shared the fact that we received a grant to get brand new fancy, permanent boards in our rooms.  We are so excited.  This talk really was a conversation.  There was so much sharing and Kathy and I walked away with great ideas from the teachers in our room.  Thank you!  Use the hashtag VNPS when coming up with even more great ideas.