Showing posts with label Alice Keeler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alice Keeler. Show all posts

Friday, November 8, 2019

MiGoogle 2019

My Tuesday started extra early with a very long drive, which is not fun for this non-morning person.  However. 

It was a worthwhile drive to a very worthwhile day at the 8th annual MiGoogle Conference.  A few years ago at this conference, I got to meet Alice Keeler for the first time.  This year, thanks to the opening keynote, I became a new fan of Jake Miller and his Educational Duct Tape, In fact, I almost got whiplash because I found myself nodding so vigorously at much of what Jake spoke about, including this:

#EduDuctTape jakemiller.net

This is my new mantra.  Or, really, it's a new way to express the message in which I firmly believe - tech is not the goal of a learning experience, instead, tech should enhance the learning experience while the skill, lesson, or content is the goal.

Jake had *so* many good tidbits and reminders that it was kinda hard to keep up.  The best thing I can offer you now is to follow Jake on Twitter, and check out his podcasts and website, paying particularly close attention to his gifs!

Gifs.  I am now obsessed with learning to make them.  Yeah, there are tons and tons of them out there, but the way Jake uses them, for those mini-lessons, snippets of learning, and digestible bites of knowledge... yep.  Gotta get me some of that.

Aside from fangirling over Jake, I spent time learning about Soundtrap (post coming soon!), Google Keep (finally!), and exploring Shared Drives (an awesome organizational assist!) in addition to presenting on Google Tour Creator and Google Slides.

Interestingly, something that echoed through both MiGoogle and last week's Mercy Tech Talk was the concept of coaching, modeling, and gradual release.  As educators, we model for our students, coach them, and gradually release the responsibility of constructing knowledge to them.  The same applies as leaders in an educational community.  
I do, we do, you do.
This mantra should live within all who work in an educational setting.

Thank you to John Sowash and Sowash Ventures and Lake Fenton High School and all the sponsors who helped make MiGoogle 2019 possible!  Looking forward to next year!



Friday, March 15, 2019

FanGirl Friday: Alice Keeler

The first time I saw Alice Keeler's quote about three dots and a tiny triangle, about  I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit baffled.  See, I consider Alice to be the Queen of Google.  And she is the Supergirl of Sheets.  Which, continuing on this honesty streak, was my least favorite of the main G-Suite Apps.

Until I found Alice.

What Alice Keeler taught me about spreadsheets is nothing short of spectacular.  She is totally write, the answer is always a spreadsheet.  Seriously, there really is very little that you can't do in Google Sheets!  From pixel art to digital badges, from traditional spreadsheets to self-grading quizzes, Sheets really is a jack of all trades.

For a very long time, I fangirl'd Alice from afar - following her on Twitter, scouring her website for tech tips and tricks, downloading every app and extension she created.  The tech-tips I shared on Tech-Tip-Tuesday in our weekly staff memo can be credited to Alice's blogs.  In addition to being a top techie, Alice is a mother of five.  Yes, five.  And she teaches.  And is an author.

miGoogle Conference, November 2017
You can probably imagine my reaction when I found out Alice was coming to Michigan, to keynote the miGoogle conference in November 2017.  Yeah.  I was pretty stoked.  Like, bouncing in my chair excited.  If you EVER have a chance to hear Alice speak, take it.  You will leave feeling inspired, motivated, and excited to be a part of the incredible world of educators!