I've been to numerous technology and education conferences/workshops in the past 10 years, too many to name. Each time I visit one of these conferences I find a great deal of innovative technologies (both hardware and software) that are being used in schools and classrooms, but I never seem to find enough exceptional presentations that specifically focus on academic content standards being met in a creative project that takes us on a journey from lesson plan to assessment.
A lot of these presentations say things like, "you can use this technology to do this" or "you can use this technology to do that." What the teachers and administrators in our school are looking for, and I believe others are as well, are presentations that detail specific projects that list each step in the classroom from the project design, to implementation, to assessment of the project's effectiveness at delivering specific academic content standards.
Enter CATIIE. CATIIE stands for Creativity and Technology Integration in Innovative Education. Our school, Central Catholic High School, is about to announce a new annual conference. From the conference website:
"This conference specifically focuses on and delivers presentations that demonstrate curricular best-practices in creativity and technology integration. These sessions will take real-world educational objectives and standards, and show how these are being delivered to students using lessons that incorporate 21st century skills and exceptional creativity."
I am very excited by the opportunity to help create a conference that is specifically tailored to provide professional development to teachers that are committed to integrating both creativity and technology into the delivery of their curriculum. If you know of any projects that "blew you away" in their design, implementation, and effectiveness at delivering technology and/or creativity infused learning, please ask those teachers or technology integration specialists to consider sharing them with others via our CATIIE conference. Please note that we would love examples from all subject matter areas (math, language, social studies, etc).
Thank you.
CH