On Saturday, November 4th, I attended the PEAK Conference in Flagstaff, AZ. This event is hosted annually by AzTEA Northern Chapter and was held at Coconino Community College (Lone Tree Campus). This incredibly stunning venue was nestled in the deep pines and the large windowed buildings afforded a wonderful sense of being part of the environment outside while working indoors.

This is part of the AzTEA annual tri-conference series. This year's series: Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century'. Last year Jack Wallbrecht and I presented at the 3rd in the series - "WOW" Way Out West Conference which happens each April at the ASU West Campus.

The focus of this first in the 2006-2007 series was 'Teaching and Technology'.

Keynote speaker Hall Davidson is an amazing force of energy and enthusiasm. This gentleman is involved in so many incredible initiatives for students utilizing technology to move them into the realm of true critical thinking, it was hard to follow his rapid pace and excitement. I wanted to reflect on every morsel but he just kept piling amazing ideas and things he is involved with on top of amazing ideas and things he is involved with.

I attended a breakout session on GarageBand. One Maricopa County district charged every teacher with developing ways to improve literacy and language fluency, as part of an overall initiative. Incredibly innovative and imaginative Middle School English Teachers are using this software as part of their response. Students must prepare scripts that meet content and rubric demands set by the teacher - driven by curriculum and standards. If the student's work meets the appropriate criteria, they earn the ability to use GarageBand to create video and sound that supports the message of their written (read orally into the end result video) work. While we are a PC district and this is mac software, this innovative and creative teacher effort should be recognized - Engaging students in new and unique ways, to achieve at a higher level of critical thinking/learning, integrating technology seamlessly for the sake of gaining knowledge NOT for the sake of technology! It simply doesn't get any better than this!

Another information-rich session was run by ADE Ed Tech Director Cathy Poplin re-introducing IDEAL, the ADE portal initiative for administrators and teachers. When initially rolled-out a few years ago, the registration process was rather cumbersome and prohibitive. ADE has successfully streamlined the process and ASSET is now within the powerful IDEAL portal. Educators need use only one portal (IDEAL) to access both powerful CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT tools and resources!

On top of a wealth of incredible resources and data for administrators and teachers there are AIMS Practice Tests. Coming Soon (data was being uploaded and verified at the time of this conference) schools under SIP will soon have data available through the IDEAL portal. No teacher of administrator should work without this powerful resource developed by ADE. Link to IDEAL PORTAL here.

To quote Tom Horne: "IDEAL represents our commitment and dedication to offer online resources that support high quality teaching and that provide an engaging, technology-rich learning environment for all Arizona students. " (Quote pulled from IDEAL website)

Another session I attended was presented by Technology Department from Flagstaff Unified School District. They were sharing the results of their District's Technology Literacy Assessments from last year's state baseline and this's year's Fall Pre-Assessments, which MUSD concludes next week. The Flagstaff Board and Administration are using this data to identify needs and assign appropriate support ($$$) to address those needs.
Learn more about TLA here: http://maricopa-itv.blogspot.com/2006/11/state-technology-learning-assessments.html
And here: http://www.techmusd.blogspot.com/

During the lunch break I represented Eastside AzTEA, for which I am co-chair, along with former Chair Ruth Camuse. We welcomed and lunched with Eastside AzTEA members and discussed mutual interests and needs in the area of Technology Integration support for teachers.

Congratulations to AzTEA Northside Chapter for an incredibly successful conference!
Thanks to Jill Dingman (Grant Director) and the Pinal County ITv Consortium for sponsoring me at this event!