RockStar Teacher

This last week I had the opportunity to attend the CueRockStar Teacher Camp in Crescent City, CA.  I wanted to take some time to reflect on this amazing event.  It was a very exciting, but slightly overwhelming, week.  I had done so many things with technology in just 3 days that I was avoiding my screens for a couple of days.
During the course of 3 days I was able to attend 6 different sessions that were all focused on different ways to integrate technology tools into my classroom.  At a first glance, many of the sessions seemed like they would be better for older students, but I quickly found out how versatile RockStar Camp is among different grade levels.
I officially learned how to use GoogleForms in a way that will be productive in my classroom.  I plan on doing probably one form (at least) each week with my students.  I am also going to start up a general technology survey for all of the parents at my school site.  I plan on creating a survey to find out what type of technology is available to our parents and students when they are at home.  Hopefully, this will give me (and other teachers) a better idea of what our students are familiar with concerning technology.
Going along with that first session, I learned more effective ways to reach out to parents and get them more actively involved in their students' academics and school events.
Day 2 for me consisted of learning how to start some Project Based Learning (PBL) in my classroom and incorporate some coding activities into my class, as well.  The PBL is a little daunting to me and I may not take that on right away.  I am thinking I will wait until spring to start something really big like that.  This last year (2014-2015) my students participated in the Hour of Code event.  I plan on doing that again this year, but also building up to it with some other coding activities, including some web-based applications.  I am really excited about getting students coding, both in the classroom and at home, for 2 reasons: it is really fun and game-based, and it is just a springboard for what a lot of the technology industry currently looks like to society.  In my coding session, I also learned about Spheros and we will definitely be using those in my classroom this next year.
On the last day of CUERockStar I was able to focus on playing around a little bit more.  I learned a lot about an application called, "Zaption," which allows me to embed questions into pre-made YouTube videos.  I had a great time working on that and am excited to use that on a pretty regular basis with my students.  I also learned about Pear Deck, which allows a similar thing to Zaption except it is involving slide shows instead of videos.  Both of these web-based applications allow for a more interactive opportunity for my students.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the CUERockStar Teacher camp and I could easily see myself attending this event again.  I was able to learn so much and hear about so many new/different things.  While it was overwhelming at first, now that I have had some time to decompress and reflect I am feeling ready to try out quite a few new technology-based tools, applications, and activities to use with my second graders this coming fall.