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.

There are many entry points to understanding artificial intelligence and sharing it with your students, but one some of the best ways to explore AI are right in your Chromebook. Through an exploration of Google Arts & Culture, Applied Digital Skills, and Practice Sets educators and students alike can experience AI and start to build their skills with engaging practice and thoughtful collaboration with AI. We will explore fun starter points with Google Arts & Culture experiments and games that help learners explore AI in tangible engaging ways. In order to help facilitate deeper learning in our students we will explore some Applied Digital Skills lessons and some possibilities for student-created AI-infused artifacts. Finally, we will explore the possibilities for AI as a learning partner in Practice Sets and how that can support personalized and competency-based learning goals for educators.

We are four episodes deep into Get Googley and I just keep digging into my comedic tool belt (which is very shallow). This time it was writing New Year’s resolutions.

A few months ago I was asked to start a new web series for Utah Education Network about Google tools teachers can use. Nicole, my producer, and I decided to make these videos fun, maybe a little goofy, but entertaining. This month, within a discussion about extension activities, I believe that I have achieved that goal. Just watch the first minute to see what I mean (really, as if you can’t tell by the Viking helmet). However, in the video I explore a few options for educators to use in their classes for early finishers for extension activities.

I love collages. Not just amazing collage art a la punk zines, but any collages that create new art and movement out of existing art. As a teenager I used to make collages on the walls of my room; I would cut up music magazine, old copies of National Geographic, and newspapers. These collages were often funny, serious, and irreverent all at the same time. I would sneak in jokes just for me and be amazed when friends recognized my jokes. I took a required art course in college and had the option to make my own final project in the course.

If you have ever been on a video call with me, you know that I love music (also see my SongEDU series). My background is the fruit of years of dead format collecting and I love sharing it with anyone who jumps on a call with me. Music continues to get me through difficult days and fuel me on the good ones. So, while keeping that in mind, I wanted to develop a way for our students to share what they are listening to. I used to do this informally with students every day. “What’s are you listening to?” and they would immediately apologize, but then I would explain that I really wanted to know. Learned about some great artists that way, but I never really formalized it into a practice in my classroom.

There is a comic book store/game store near my house that I go to at least once every couple of months. Usually to check out missing issues of on going series that I need to read, but often I find myself looking for a long time at the vintage trading cards. They have this great section of vintage superhero and movie trading cards and, even though I know I don’t need them, I always pick up a pack. There was just something magical about picking up these little cellophane packages when I was a little kid and even as an adult popping those packages open is just a little too much fun. I always loved the vintage 90s Marvel cards. The artwork was always rad and before the internet it allowed me to know about all the characters without buying all the series.