One Best Thing:
Kids Connect: Student-Led Technology Conferences
This week, I chose to do my review over an iBook called 'One Best Thing' by Paul Shaw. One Best Thing is a series of iBooks that are each written by different people and cover different topics. First off, 'One Best Thing' is created by Apple Distinguished Educators (ADE) that demonstrate the use of Apple technologies to transform teaching and learning. This specific iBook talks about Kids Connect: Student-Led Technology Conferences. Kids Connect is a two day conference organizes by 'kids' for 'kids' and was started in 2004. Kids are apart of an organization that allows them to use a real budget of $20,000 to make the conference a success. The kids start off the process by thinking/brainstorming what they need to do to successfully plan a birthday party and then eventually transform that into a larger conference and so on.
One of the biggest goals of this organization is to teach professionalism to the students, nothing is sent out to schools or the community without getting checked by the editorial team. The students make business cards, have email signatures, and create databases for equipment. Deadlines are put into place to help teach time organization to the students while planning. The different committees are taught that they do need to communicate with other committees to get things done by the deadlines. The students work in committees as they have a process of how a student gets chosen as to what committee they will be assigned to. All students helping with this organization fill out a resume that includes what they enjoy and things that they believe they are good at. This is their application for different roles on the different committees. When thinking about where to hold this event, the choices have to gather interest and guaranteed success. The director Paul has tried to encourage the committee to stay away from school venues. The reason is not stated in the article. Once the venue is chosen, the theme is picked by the organizing committee. Some latest themes that have been used are 'Healthy Lifestyle' that was held at a football stadium, and 'Control, Alt, Create' which was held at a converted power station called the Brisbane Powerhouse. While students attend the 'Kids Connect' two-day conference, they work on a project using technology. At the end of the conference, the students have the ability to show and explain the project that they have been working on for two days to the audience. This includes their parents, grandparents, siblings, etc.
Below is a YouTube video that shows images and information about the 2016 Kids Connect Conference. That's all I have for this weeks review, but please make sure to go check out this 'One Best Thing' article of one of the other hundreds available on iBooks.
One of the biggest goals of this organization is to teach professionalism to the students, nothing is sent out to schools or the community without getting checked by the editorial team. The students make business cards, have email signatures, and create databases for equipment. Deadlines are put into place to help teach time organization to the students while planning. The different committees are taught that they do need to communicate with other committees to get things done by the deadlines. The students work in committees as they have a process of how a student gets chosen as to what committee they will be assigned to. All students helping with this organization fill out a resume that includes what they enjoy and things that they believe they are good at. This is their application for different roles on the different committees. When thinking about where to hold this event, the choices have to gather interest and guaranteed success. The director Paul has tried to encourage the committee to stay away from school venues. The reason is not stated in the article. Once the venue is chosen, the theme is picked by the organizing committee. Some latest themes that have been used are 'Healthy Lifestyle' that was held at a football stadium, and 'Control, Alt, Create' which was held at a converted power station called the Brisbane Powerhouse. While students attend the 'Kids Connect' two-day conference, they work on a project using technology. At the end of the conference, the students have the ability to show and explain the project that they have been working on for two days to the audience. This includes their parents, grandparents, siblings, etc.
Below is a YouTube video that shows images and information about the 2016 Kids Connect Conference. That's all I have for this weeks review, but please make sure to go check out this 'One Best Thing' article of one of the other hundreds available on iBooks.
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