Kodiak Virtual Learning Conference 2015

This year at the beginning of June I have been very lucky in participating to the Kodiak Virtual Learning Conference organized by AKTeach, the distance learning department of the Kodiak School District.
This is a pretty "young" conference, I believe it is only at its second edition, however it is a very promising, well organized, interesting, exciting, stimulating,.... (well you got the idea) conference!
Certainly Nicole Fuerst has done a fantastic job with the organization of this event and I am very blessed being part of her Professional Learning Community.

This conference was organized as two days hands-on workshops giving the opportunity to the attendees to work in depth of a specific topic.
Some of the sessions offered were:
- Natalie Freed and David Cole presented how to integrate paper circuitry into your classroom.
- Dr. Pam Loyd and John Monahan lead the session in about how to build a small Unmanned Aerial System Vehicle (UAV).
- Ron Fortunato worked with a team of administrators on the America Bridge Project-Building.
More information about these sessions and the other offered can be found at the following link: https://sites.google.com/a/kibsd.org/kodiak-island-virtual-learning-conference/products-services

I have participated to the session on paper circuitry and I am very impressed with its potentials of implementation in various classes, allowing a powerful cross curricula project-based learning experience involving Science, Art, Language Arts, and World Languages.
The paper circuitry is a cutting edge technique that applies electric circuits in original and artistic ways,  developed by Jie Qi, a graduate researcher in the High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab.

As you can see I am eager to share with you all my experience. I would highly encourage everyone to participate to next year AKTeach conference. Keep in mind that in spite of the name it is not specific for online teachers, however the presence of several online teachers from various Alaskan school districts and universities offered a rich opportunity for sharing knowledge, tools, strategies, and ideas for improving our teaching.

In the next couple of months I will collaborate with teachers from various Alaska's school districts such as Kodiak, Ketchikan, and Juneau,  for presenting a session focused on paper circuitry at AFLA (Alaskans For Language Acquisition) and ASTE (Alaska Society for Technology in Education) conferences during the incoming school year.

Please let me know if you have any questions about anything I have shared with you i this post. If you are interested in learning more, I would be very happy to share my learning with other teachers in a full day workshop.