Summer Spark 2016

From designing LEGO sets and minifigures on paper, to actually getting your hands on the colorful bricks and building with them, this session will show you everything you need to know about using LEGO in the classroom. We’ll go over basics for those of us who feel out of our element with construction toys, and go beyond the usual use of LEGO with classroom extensions that can turn a fun “activity” into a research project that will engage and excite your students.

Graphic Novels have surged in popularity over the last decade, but the increased number of books doesn’t always mean an increase in quality. This session looks at the best graphic novels and comic books for teaching elementary students, with a focus on literacy and updated teaching strategies unique to visual storytelling.

With the average American consuming over eleven hours of mass media daily, media literacy has truly become a 21st Century survival skill that can no longer stay trapped in our school libraries. In this powerful and fun keynote, Julie will explain the concepts and history of media literacy and ultimately inspire you to include it as an integral part of your daily curriculum. Teachers in all disciplines will leave this session not only motivated, but with concrete ways they can incorporate media literacy within their lessons to design wildly engaging experiences for students that spark their critical thinking. With media literacy now an integral part of the Common Core State Standards, the time is NOW for teachers to expose students to this empowering skill that ensures they are able to consume, analyze, critique and evaluate media in a whole new way. Julie will draw you in with her humor, relevant examples, engaging stories and poignant reflections in this call to action for our students to be smart consumers of their daily media diet.

Inspire creativity, innovation and collaboration by using various Augmented Reality tools. Discover a wide range of apps that address different learning styles as well as empower your students to grow and access higher level thinking while keeping the learning objective in mind. In this session you will discover new apps and tools that will transform your classroom into the coolest room in the school!

Have you ever seen something shared on Facebook ten thousand times that is so obviously FAKE?  Why is so much false information shared online? How easy is it to create credible false information?

In this fun and fast-paced session, I will share they HOW and WHY fake information flourishes online and the tools to share with YOUR students so they can de-bunk it.  They need our help to outsmart the memes!  You will leave this session with ways to research the validity of online information as well as tips and tools to share with your students.  And during an election year, the ability to discern fact from fiction is more important than ever.