MaThink conference

Last month I presented at my first MaThink conference in Riverside. I went in my room early to check out the connections and hookups. Everything was working fine as long as I used my hotspot. Then Jenn Vadnais came in. She was presenting first. She didn't have a lightning cord, so I gladly loaned her mine. Some of her Presentation wasn't loading so she called the tech person. Turns out the link wasn't working, so we got another one, and they gave us all individual passwords. I stayed to watch Jenn’s session on Desmos. I learned a few new things. 1. That you can add labels on the points, and 2. How to move points up and down, or side to side. She did an Awesome job!
      My session was full. I noticed that there were quite a few people without a computer. I was thankful that they brought in some loaner devices. It took a while to get started and for everyone to log in. As I went through the session there were many questions . I did my best to answer them. When I didn't know the answer, others jumped in to help. All in all I felt it went well. It was really nice to finally meet Kristan Morales from “Cue”. I've talked to her in email, and Twitter. She was very complimentary and said she's going to try Quizizz with her students. I asked if I could use one of her Padlets as an example in my next presentation and she said yes.
     At lunch I ate with John Stevens and Estefania Hernandez. It was great to have some colleagues there to hang out with. After lunch I went to Kristan’s Break out EDU session. Break out EDU is a big puzzle game where student find clues hidden in your room . It's very challenging, and students have to persevere to " Break out " before the time is up. Our group was able to solve the puzzle and open up all the lock boxes before time was up.  Kristan and her partner did a great job! I hope to do one of these for final exam review in May. John, Estefania, Paula Torres and I are working on some Integrated math ones. It great to have colleagues that are interested in collaborating. I'm so thankful for these people . I don't know what I'd do without their help and mentorship.
   

What is success?

What is success? A lesson goes well and then we want to analyze and pick apart everything we did. That's exactly what happened to me a few weeks ago when I presented at the EdTechTeam summit in Indio. I presented many of the same things I had presented twice before. But I made two changes. 1. I had them make magnets for the refrigerators in my “magnetic equations.” 2. I did a demo of Padlet instead of just showing examples. All day participants were coming up to me telling me how great my session was, and now I'm going crazy trying to analyze it so I can re-create it again. The people I met were genuinely excited to learn, and so happy to be at the summit. . So was it the changes I made? Did I just deliver it better? Or was it that the participants were better prepared to receive it? I'm not really sure. I guess every group of people are different. I did have more Math teachers than before.Was that it? Not sure. I have more questions than answers.

Well, next weekend I'll be presenting at two more events. The MaThink conference and OCMC. Both of these are all Math teacher events. I'm thinking about whether or not to keep things the same, or change more things. I'm sure it will get easier with more experience and more reflection.