My name is Anthippi Harou and I am an EFL teacher in Greece.
ISTE is considered to be the largest teacher-based, nonprofit organization in the field of educational technology. Every year there is a conference organized by ISTE in various parts of America; this year it was held in Denver from June 26th to 29th. For people who cannot join this great annual event live, there is a special community created called NotatISTE.
So this was the first time I'd ever participated in a NotatISTE community using the hashtag #NotatISTE16. Unfortunately, I was not as active as I would like to have been due to an online course on PBL by the European Teacher Academy I had already started.
I had learned about #ISTE and #NotatISTE through a blog post by Shelly Sanchez Terrell, who has been one of the most significant and inspiring persons in my PLN.
A positive feature I can recall about my virtual participation is the #NotatISTE16 Google Community which I had joined. I felt glad I met Peggy George in the community because she had also been one of my inspirators and I considered her a familiar person. She offered great support by notifying, reminding and praising #Not atISTE16 educators on their work. She also updated the community LIVEBINDERS, a web tool that she really loves - maybe for the practicality it provides educators with to share bulky and valuable resources.
As soon as I entered the community, I read a pinned informative google doc post by the community moderator Jennifer Wagner. I got a first idea of what participants should do. I fell in love with the challenges we were encouraged to join. The whole idea of the challenge concept was so engaging and motivating providing a gamification element! For each challenge you accomplished, you filled the relevant points in a shared google doc we were provided with. Some of the challenges I completed included writing a post 'about me' in the G+ community, contributing to the Badge Share Google Presentation (mine is currently slide 35), creating an extra ribbon for #NoatISTE. By the way, I liked the great variety of ribbon gifs offered to us in order to use and enhance our creativity. Another challenge was to post a selfie with a monument of your area. For this one, I created a blended image with a photo of myself and one of the Acropolis using LUNAPIC. I watched some periscope live sessions and joined the #NotatISTE remind class group. I also engaged in lots of tweeting, retweeting about the event news, resources and other stuff which were part of the challenges.There were still many more really amazing challenges till the end of #ISTE16 but I was unable to try them all due to personal shortage of time as I have already mentioned.
Besides the gamification element, an extra advantage to my participation in #NotatISTE was my PLN development. I made connections, esp. on twitter, with valuable people who shared similar interests to me. We exchanged ideas and I expanded my knowledge on instruction practices with the use of technology.
All in all, I consider my engagement in #NotatISTE16 a great experience, which kept me updated with what happens in educational technology worldwide. I am looking forward to implementing the useful ideas I have gathered in my EFL classes when Greek schools start again after our summer vacation!
ISTE is considered to be the largest teacher-based, nonprofit organization in the field of educational technology. Every year there is a conference organized by ISTE in various parts of America; this year it was held in Denver from June 26th to 29th. For people who cannot join this great annual event live, there is a special community created called NotatISTE.
So this was the first time I'd ever participated in a NotatISTE community using the hashtag #NotatISTE16. Unfortunately, I was not as active as I would like to have been due to an online course on PBL by the European Teacher Academy I had already started.
I had learned about #ISTE and #NotatISTE through a blog post by Shelly Sanchez Terrell, who has been one of the most significant and inspiring persons in my PLN.
A positive feature I can recall about my virtual participation is the #NotatISTE16 Google Community which I had joined. I felt glad I met Peggy George in the community because she had also been one of my inspirators and I considered her a familiar person. She offered great support by notifying, reminding and praising #Not atISTE16 educators on their work. She also updated the community LIVEBINDERS, a web tool that she really loves - maybe for the practicality it provides educators with to share bulky and valuable resources.
As soon as I entered the community, I read a pinned informative google doc post by the community moderator Jennifer Wagner. I got a first idea of what participants should do. I fell in love with the challenges we were encouraged to join. The whole idea of the challenge concept was so engaging and motivating providing a gamification element! For each challenge you accomplished, you filled the relevant points in a shared google doc we were provided with. Some of the challenges I completed included writing a post 'about me' in the G+ community, contributing to the Badge Share Google Presentation (mine is currently slide 35), creating an extra ribbon for #NoatISTE. By the way, I liked the great variety of ribbon gifs offered to us in order to use and enhance our creativity. Another challenge was to post a selfie with a monument of your area. For this one, I created a blended image with a photo of myself and one of the Acropolis using LUNAPIC. I watched some periscope live sessions and joined the #NotatISTE remind class group. I also engaged in lots of tweeting, retweeting about the event news, resources and other stuff which were part of the challenges.There were still many more really amazing challenges till the end of #ISTE16 but I was unable to try them all due to personal shortage of time as I have already mentioned.
Besides the gamification element, an extra advantage to my participation in #NotatISTE was my PLN development. I made connections, esp. on twitter, with valuable people who shared similar interests to me. We exchanged ideas and I expanded my knowledge on instruction practices with the use of technology.
All in all, I consider my engagement in #NotatISTE16 a great experience, which kept me updated with what happens in educational technology worldwide. I am looking forward to implementing the useful ideas I have gathered in my EFL classes when Greek schools start again after our summer vacation!
Below you can see sample of my challenge contribution:
I enjoyed reading your post.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!I really appreciate your comment!
ReplyDeleteI love your slideshow illustrating your #NOTATISTE activities! You participated in a lot of activities, even though you didn't have as much time as you wanted. I, too, wish I had more time. I was able to watch several periscopes and read several blogposts, but haven't done any of the other wonderful activities that Jen has provided.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment!
Delete