Teacher Winters
Making. Doing. Sharing.
I recently had the privilege of keynoting the Heart of Innovation Conference for Heartland Are Education Agency in Iowa. Their conference centers on using technology in the classroom and ways to build up our competency as educators so that we can work with students more effectively. My keynote, “Starting, Exploring” looks at technology as a starting point for building connections in our educational communities and how we can build competency in ourselves towards a better tomorrow for education. Check out the slides and resources below:
In January 2023 I was asked to speak at UCTE, Utah’s English language teacher conference. They wanted me to explore how we can develop curiosity about working with technology in our classrooms. I was elated; creativity, curiosity, and technology are three areas where I love to explore intersections.
Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons are a wonderful way to provide opportunities for students to learn storytelling, collaboration, and communication in a classroom environment. Through learning by doing, participants in this session will learn how to create and play a classroom role-playing game with students.
Photography is an amazing gateway for students to express their ideas on a variety of topics both in the photo and in the process. In this playground session, come learn how to make a cinemagraph and gifs using Adobe Creative Cloud. We will also explore content area possibilities for using photography, particularly cinemagraphs and gifs, as choice-based projects.
Utah’s Online School Library (UOSL) is a virtual library designed for all Utah publicly-funded K-12 students and teachers. UOSL allows users to research and share resources from databases, including Culture Grams, EBSCO, Gale Reference, Scrible, Soundzabound, eMedia, and Preschool Pathways. UOSL provides a model for other organizations to fulfill the needs of educators and learners in their own constituencies. The reference materials in UOSL are designed to support “lifelong skills of selecting information from a wide variety of sources, assessing its worth, and applying newfound knowledge to problems, preparing them for learning, doing, and problem-solving in college, career, and throughout life.” (Utah Core Information Literacy Standards). Come learn with UOSL!
One of the most difficult things for educators, particularly with more tools available than ever, is to find tools and resources of value and put them into action in their classrooms.
Whether an educator is trying to build their understanding of a particular pedagogical practice (UDL, UBD), a technology tool (AI, SAMR, TPACK), or creating a list of possibilities for their students, curating and correlating resources can be the most difficult part of our jobs.
Adding an outdoor classroom to an existing school provides students and educators with ample opportunity and reason to spend class time outside. However, developing appropriate and technologically enabled lesson plans for these excursions is incredibly important to the development of the space and to providing engaging learning opportunities for students.
Educator podcasts are an effective and timely way to provide professional development and allow educators to share their stories. Through collaboration between three Utah educator podcasts, we have created an educator podcast network that helps provide opportunities and professional development to educators from Utah and beyond.
Creating and building breakout rooms continues to be an innovative process in classrooms. However, finding starting points and developing an appropriate curriculum can be difficult. This session solves that problem by providing appropriate and scalable ways you can engage students with escape rooms.
Over the course of ISTE Live 2023, I will be adding resources, ideas, social media posts, and more to this Wakelet Collection. It will be organized by when I attend sessions from the beginning of the conference to the end.
If you are presenting or come across an amazing resource that you would like to share (with permission), please feel free to email me at matt@teacherwinters.net and I will get it added to this collection. Thanks!
Recent Keynotes
I recently had the privilege of keynoting the Heart of Innovation Conference for Heartland Are Education Agency in Iowa. Their conference centers on using technology in the classroom and ways to build up our competency as educators so that we can work with students more effectively. My keynote, “Starting, Exploring” looks at technology as a starting point for building connections in our educational communities and how we can build competency in ourselves towards a better tomorrow for education. Check out the slides and resources below:
Before I was a technology trainer I was an ELA teacher for a very long time in my career. I loved teaching novels and engaging students in the writing process. Teaching students to engage with their own ideas about specific topics and to build connections with the larger world through writing still is one of the favorite parts of my career. I was lucky enough to have administrators that understood my love of technology, and the skills I have for writing grants to bring that technology to my classroom.
On August 1st, 2022 I am so excited to share my keynote at the Utah Charter Network Annual Symposium at Thanksgiving Point. My keynote is entitled “Reconnect with your passion as an educator through connection.” In it I share my journey as an educator to find my community in education and how I continue to share and build up my community in Utah and beyond. Check out the entire presentation above!
Educator podcasts are an effective and timely way to provide professional development and allow educators to share their stories. Through collaboration between three Utah educator podcasts, we have created an educator podcast network that helps provide opportunities and professional development to educators from Utah and beyond.
One of the most important things when implementing new technologies into a system, particularly an educational system is to try and understand the different ways it might affect different levels of the organization. I worked in restaurants for a long time in college.
If you go to ISTE23 in Philadelphia this year, make sure that you make some time for Playgrounds. They are short table presentations by experts all centered around the same topic and they help to get some personal connections to content and ask your questions to experts who can help you build your understanding.
I attended my first UCET in 2018. I had just come back from SXSWEDU week and I was on fire for more ideas and community. At the suggestion of my good friend, Quin Henderson, I headed to the University of Utah and joined the conference. I was excited to talk to a lot of the speakers as part of our podcast project at the time, Edtrex Rewind, and to just take in the conference. It was the first time that I had attended a state-level education conference and I was tickled by how much fun I had throughout the event.
A couple of months ago I was asked Katie Garrett, an associate director at UEN, to help a group of college and graduate students explore podcasting. These students were from the American Indian Resource Center and were developing a podcast to highlight the work of the AIRC. They also wanted to explore the issues facing American Indians who are in college or graduate school. We spent an hour or so together developing ideas, touring the studio, and recording their voices for the first time.
Like many of the educator community, I am headed to ISTE Live 24 in Denver this next week. I have a jammed packed schedule with amazing co-presenters, podcast recording sessions, and more. Above you will find a list of all my sessions throughout the conference. Come find me and say hello, share your favorite part of the conference, or possibly record a quick podcast with me as we walk through the conference. See you there!
The 4Cs are a crucial part of any classroom, but they are elusive for many educators within their curriculum, particularly when combined with considerations for accessibility and personalized learning. Google Workspace for Education provides a set of intuitive tools for any classroom to meet learning needs.
From the generative world building of faces and heels to the practical physics of suplexes and frog splashes, professional wrestling has long been a public display of integrated STEAM. Participants will lock up in tables, laptops, and chairs matches designed to reveal possibilities and purpose of kayfabe in the classroom
Explore how to create learning soundscapes with simple recording tools available on most digital devices. We will explore simple recording, editing, and publishing techniques to share audio-based assessments.
Learn about practical strategies and techniques for creating and curating podcasts tailored for educator professional development. Learn how to identify valuable content, script engaging episodes, record high-quality audio, and build a podcasting platform that fosters continuous growth and collaboration among educators.
A few weeks back, as part of my job at UEN, I was lucky enough to be a part of the Utah Rural Schools Association Conference. This conference pulls in over 500 educators from the rural areas of Utah.
ISTE 2022, even though it was completely online, was an amazing experience. I was able to participate in many sessions that really opened some great doors for new ideas and some great opportunities for sharing.
Nothing is more frustrating than going to a session at a conference, being inspired, and then losing the links to that session’s materials. So, I started using Wakelet to keep track of everything that I find at conferences. Above are some of the amazing resources that I found at FETC 2022 back in January. The conference was an amazing experience with dozens of great sessions each day. After a few years without a face-to-face conference, being able to walk into sessions with amazing presenters and make connections again!
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Sharing ideas, lessons, and resources with educators help build better learning communities.
For ideas, templates, and free resources, check out Teacher Resources above.
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Connecting with other educators is imperative to being a better educator and learner.
Find conference presentations and conference collections on the Conferences page.
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Sharing educator stories is an important part of seeing the whole picture in education.
Check out the podcasts I appear on and support.
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Have an idea or story for Teacher Winters? Email Matt to start sharing.
matt@teacherwinters.net