Although I tweeted about my amazing experience at this year's Simcoe County District School Board's PUSH Conference, I never blogged about it or shared my presentation on my blog. The PUSH Conference occurred on March 5th, 2016 and was such an exciting event. Educators from the Simcoe Board unite to discuss how to integrate technology and new ideas into classrooms; so many bright and outside-of-the-box thinkers in one place was a unique experience for me and I learned so much as a result. I am very thankful that SCDSB has the PUSH Conference on a yearly basis, that educators are so open-minded and willing to try new things in the classroom, and that educators are willing to share their bright ideas with others. Speaking of which, I have included my presentation 'Making Media Matter' which I presented with my partner (Alanna Uyl) at the SCDSB PUSH Conference in this blog post. Our presentation discusses why we should include media in the classroom and what the pros and cons are to this decision. Our presentation had participants interacting using technology as we went along. Overall, we shared our experiences with technology as teacher candidates and how we have integrated technology in the classroom in our placements, in our volunteer work, in our university class work, and just in our own personal lives as well. The material from this presentation was mostly collected and researched throughout our Honours Media course at Lakehead University Orillia (Media and Digital Literacy: MDL 4000). We had many opportunities to take what we learned from this course and use it with students. This can be seen with in our examples of students playing with green screen, google drawings, etc. The opportunity of testing technology integration and presenting our findings at the PUSH Conference is one that I will never forget. Not only did we present our own findings but we were able to hear other presenters talk about what they believe in and have found useful in the classroom. From Minecraft to Twitter to Seesaw to Breakout Education, my mind was blown. Can't wait to implement these ideas in future classrooms and blog about them!
Making Media Matter:
