Educational Technology at IU13

Our migration to Google Apps for Education at IU13 is occurring in phases.  The first phase was some initial testing in Tech Services.  The second phase was to begin rolling out the migration and setup process with all the other departments in IU13.  In this second phase, all IU13 employees were to disassociate their personal Google accounts from the iu13.org email address as was outlined in this blog post (IU13 is moving to Google Apps for Education (Part 1)).

We are very excited to begin the process of migrating to Google Apps for Education for all Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 employees.  You might ask, What is Google Apps for Education?  Click here for some published Q&A about Google Apps for Education. There are some great benefits that all IU13 employees will experience once this migration is complete.

Starting at 7:45 am, educators from all over Eastern, PA trudged through the cold, rainy morning embarking upon Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 looking forward to a great time of learning and collaborating at the Elementary Technology Conference.  After everyone enjoyed a hot breakfast of eggs and bacon (everyone loves bacon!), I had the great opportunity to open the day encouraging educators to use the "gift of time" to their advantage challenging them to learn, explore, collaborate, and investigate new tools and skill sets throughout the day which they could implement right away in the classroom to maximize student learning. 

After some brief introductions, Richard Byrne opened the conference with a Keynote encouraging us to DISCOVER throughout the day!  Educators had 32 different sessions to chose from throughout the day from iPad implementations, formative assessment tools, to digital story-telling tools, etc. outlining instructional technology best practices in the classroom.  You could just feel the energy, excitement, and passion in the room as over 260 Elementary Educators shared, explored, and collaborated with one another.  It was exciting to see the twitter feed #iu13etc14 light up throughout the day as people shared important quotes and resources with their PLCs. 

My biggest take away from the day was a session I attended on coding!  The resources shared in this session were perfect to help celebrate the Hour of Code week last week or even ongoing in the upcoming weeks/months.  What was your best take-away?  Either post in the comments section below or feel free to tweet them to @IU13IMS using #iu13etc14.

We are looking forward to celebrating National Digital Learning Day #DLDay on March 13, 2015.  Although that may seem a long time away, the way we are celebrating in PA will occur much sooner!  This year, PA through PAIMS (Pennsylvania Instructional Media Services) has decided to celebrate National Digital Learning Day through participation in the Hour of Code during Computer Science Education Week December 8-14, 2014. 

Attention all educators serving k-6!  We have a special conference planned just for you!  This year we celebrate our 7th year of our Elementary Technology Conference by providing you with 32 different sessions to chose from.  Check out our new promo: