Sunday 14 July 2013

Apple Summer Institute 2013

I'm on board flight AA2189 bound for Austin, Texas. So much excitement is in the air with the four new ADEs on our flight. TeamYYC is ready for whatever hits us this week. 

The anticipation for this trip has been building for months. Since being inducted into the Apple Distinguished Educator Class of 2013 in February, I have connected with so many amazing educators from around the world. This week will be a chance to meet and connect some of them. With 300 innovative teachers converging in one place, I'm sure there will be lots of action, fun, and learning to be had. I'm told it will be the most amazing 5 days of my career. I'm sure I will be in awe most of the week. 

That being said, my plan is to take in as much as I can, meet as many people as I can, and learn a whack sack (love this word used a lot by Dean @Shareski) of new things. I'm sure I will feel overwhelmed at first but I'm hoping to get over that fast and get into the swing of things straight away. I don't want to miss any opportunity I come across this week as this will more than likely be one of lonly a few trips I do like this in my career. 

I have never been to Austin, Texas. I hear it's an amazing city and one of a few technology hubs in the U.S. According to our ADE13Austin schedule we do not have a lot of time to explore outside of our conference centre (a top secret location;). Any free time will be at night time and early morning will be the time to explore Austin. This could be difficult as a lot of the networking and connections with people apparently happen 'after hours'. Maybe the connections will happen while tiki touring or in a bar or mall? Who knows? Whatever happens I'll embrace it with open arms.

So they said rest up before the institute - Yeah right! My first two weeks of my summer break has been busy with spending time with my family and doing my usual beginning of summer jobs around the house. With my parents arriving from New Zealand two days after I return, the house needed to be ready for the 'king and queen' before I left. Realistically, resting was never going to be an option. I'm sure I'll run on adrenaline for the next 6 days and the well see what happens after that. 

Throughout this week, I plan to reflect daily at the end of each day or through the day and share share by tweeting and taking photos on Instagram of things I have learned. I know we work on projects while we are here and so hopefully I'll be able to share those as we work through them. 

One of these projects will be my 'One Best Thing'. We have been asked to think of something that we have done that was amazing. Something we could share with others and that could be replicated by anyone else. I have been thinking about doing something about making Learning Visible. This has really has been what has got me where I am today. Without all the sharing I have done, I would not have collected all the evidence of learning that I now have. Although this is a very broad topic I may still make this my One Best Thing. If not the visible learning avenue, I may look at doing one 'easy to replicate' project that I did on iPads with our kindergarten students. We called it real world math and it was something that a lot of other classes/teachers connected with in our building. More to come on that one...

I really hope I can keep up my reflection through blogging this week. We'll see how long the adrenaline lasts and the energy to reflect at the end of each long day.
    • Reflect via my blog at least three times (hopefully every day)
    • Tweet aha moments and interesting things
    • Take photos to tell my story
    • Connect face to face with those I have meet online
    • Learn more Final Cut Pro X - an Apple video editing suite
    • Establish my One Best Thing
    • And most importantly, have FUN!
Here's to #ADE13Austin! 

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