Next week, I will be attending the WestCAST (Western Canadian Association for Student Teaching) 2012 conference being hosted by the University of Calgary. I attended the conference last year when it was in Brandon, Manitoba and shared a session called “Google 2.0 – More Than a Search Engine” and met many other student teachers from across western Canada.
This year, the conference challenge is “How might we rethink the focus and practices of teacher education to explore emergent insights into learning?” and I’m excited to hear what other universities are doing to investigate this.
In Calgary, I’ll be involved in two different sessions. The first workshop is called “Using POEs with K-12 Students to Develop Scientific Concepts” where my Science Education classmates will be sharing and demonstrating various POE (Predict, Observe, Explain) activities. We’re sharing a wiki using business (front and back) and you can find it at bit.ly/urpoes.
The second session I’m running is called “Flipping Math Upside Down” where I am planning to share my use of the flipped classroom over my internship. I’m still working on the finer details of the presentation, but I’m hoping to share my story, show other examples and discuss some pros and cons about the flipped classroom before opening the floor to questions and having a conversation. I haven’t decided yet how I’ll share my presentation with those who attend, but I’m likely going to just use a GoogleDoc and Slideshare (unless you hav ea better suggestion, let me know!)
I’m planning on live-tweeting using the hashtag #westcast2012 * throughout the conference, and I hope others in attendance do the same. It has been a while since I blogged, and I’m hoping that the sessions and conversations can be a spark to get me back into the groove of sharing.
*Edit (Feb 19, 2012): The Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary has recommended using #WestCAST2012, instead of the #westcast I was planning on using. http://educ.ucalgary.ca/node/1171
Photo Credit: HessonPhotography via Compfight cc
I wish I had a chance to see your presentation during WESTcast, I am sure it was very informative! I will definitly check out the POE activities you’ve listed online. Thanks Kyle for sharing these resources.