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Using VR to Market Your Academic Program!

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As we prepared for our first week of recruiting middle school students to our Early College High School, it dawned on me that we could showcase our school even before students had a chance to visit our campus in person! Although we couldn't bring our workshops to our recruiting events, we could most definitely bring prospective students to our workshops with a virtual tour of our campus. In my current role as a high school assistant principal, I work closely with a P-TECH school, which is a Pathways in Technology Early College High School. Our unique school model focuses on the trade industries and prepares students for careers right out of high school or college. Our classes teach students trade skills such as welding, HVAC, and construction technologies. Students who join our program not only get an abundance of hands-on learning experiences, but they also graduate with certifications in these trades and college hours to boot! Our program goes beyond the classroom....
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5 Tips for Teaching With Google Expeditions

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Are you new to Google Expeditions? Are you excited and ready to take your students' learning experience to another level, but need some help in getting started? If so, read below for 5 quick tips for teaching with Google Expeditions! Tip 1: Know What's Available in Google Expeditions.   Before launching an Expedition with your students take a look through this Google sheet that lists over 900 VR Expeditions to see what's available. The Expeditions are organized by topic, name of the Expedition, the panorama titles (which are the list of scenes included), the location of the Expedition along with a brief description. Here, you might even find a lesson plan that goes along with the Expedition and you have the option to share your own lesson to the TES website too! Finally, some of the listed Expeditions include a link that allows you to preview the Expedition on Poly . Needless to say, this list is a great starting point as you plan your lessons to make strong ...
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A Personalized PD Pilot

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Inspiration & An Idea Last summer at ISTE I came across an incredible poster session called " The Amazing Race to Personalized PD " put together by Kimberly Boyd, Kim Wienken, and Rachelle Wooten from Fort Bend ISD. This poster session highlighted a personalized PD model they developed and implemented in their district. As I looked at their format, I knew this was a very feasible concept that would definitely help my teachers earn their technology PD hours- and most importantly, do it in a personalized way! I have often reflected on my professional development methodologies and for the most part have been satisfied with much of my training content and delivery, however there's always been a few things that I knew could be improved. One was offering content that would be engaging enough to intrinsically motivate teachers to apply newly learned tools or resources post-training; another was making content more interesting to them by providing more choice. And t...
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Empower Your Students, and Yourself!

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When I noticed this book was blowing up on Twitter, I just had to see for myself what was going on in, "Empower: What Happens When Students Own Their Learning" by John Spencer and A.J. Juliani. I downloaded it to my Kindle, dug in and immediately identified with so many of the ideas I was reading about. In the book we are cautioned that lessons that empower our students won't be easy or perfect on the first try. At first, the process may look a bit messy or a bit noisy but that should not discourage us from empowering our students. It gets better! As I read, I reflected on my teaching and especially on one unforgettable moment. I was taken  back to a time when I was teaching a few years back. I was doing a collaborative social studies project with my 4th graders. I allowed them choose their topic, and gave them a few choices on final products. I was excited about it- the kids were excited about it- and so we started to dig in. Each group was working in differen...
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When Sheep Lead to a City Council

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The Minecraft City Council Building As I was heading out to the grocery store, I stopped by my kids' room to see if they needed me to bring them anything. The trio was hanging out, all playing Minecraft together. They had already left me a list downstairs, and as I turned to go, my kids went on to tell me that they had created a City Council in their Minecraft world. Intrigued, and surprised by this, I sat down, grabbed my notes, and asked them to tell me more. My kids, who all share a world, were in the habit of all doing their own thing. Each would build whatever they wanted to his/her taste. Each one would spawn new animals or other additions as they pleased. Eventually, they noticed that things were getting a bit chaotic, and that they needed a way to come to agreements on what they were and weren't  allowed to do. In a nutshell, the sheep made them do it! "The sheep kept eating all my grass!" said my middle daughter. "Yeah, and sometimes I ...
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Location: Laredo, TX, USA
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