What Would Your Keynote Be?

I was asked to be a Keynote Speaker at a local Flipped Conference in a couple weeks. I have to say I am pretty excited. I don't mind being in front of people. I really like talking with teachers to get their ideas and learning from them.
I started thinking about what I wanted my keynote to be about. I had a few ideas. Then I went to the Schoology NEXT Conference and Jennie Magiera was one of the keynote speakers. Her question at the end was, "What would your keynote be?" That got me thinking more about what I wanted to say. What was the one thing that I want other teachers to think about before school starts?
In the flipped classroom there are great questions about face to face learning and being a student in my classroom. Those that use the flipped idea have thought about those ideas. I think about Brian Bennett and Ramsey Musallam and their ideas about moving further in the classroom. These have taken me to losing control in the classroom. Giving the students the ownership of the learning. Giving up control is hard fora teacher. At least it is for me. I have been changing the balance of control toward the students for a few years now and it has helped with discipline in my class and more student engagement.
So my question for you, the reader, is what would your keynote be? What would you teach other teachers if you had the opportunity to present? And why do we not take the time to prepare something to teach to teachers so we can become an expert on the one thing we think is important in our classroom? So, what would your keynote be?

Learning Management System Questions

I have been looking into different Learning Management Systems (LMS) for a while now.  I started with Edmodo and loved the ease of use with it, but have started using Schoology because of the many options it gives me. It has some amazing tools for discussions, assignments, assessments, and collaboration. One of the new bonuses it will have soon is the ability to video conference with a student.  I can see that being used during class with an absent student, or with another teacher to teach a lesson.  My district has bought into the Enterprise version and that gave me even more options. Because we are using Schoology, a few teachers in our school attended the Schoology #NEXT14 conference in Denver in June.  They put on quite the shindig for their first conference.  The keynote speakers were amazing, the break out sessions were great and very helpful for a guy that has use it a little for a few PD classes.  The conference gave me some great ideas on how to use it, but then came the questions I had to ask.

• How is this going to make me a better teacher?
• How is this going to give my students the opportunity to learn more?
• Is this going to make my job easier or harder?
• Will it become a place to just upload packets or will it have something more to it?
• How can I use this tool to truly differentiate the learning in my class without making it a “To Do List” of assignments?

I have to ask myself these questions because I am a bit tired of the “magic bullet” app or program every other week. I do not mind working a little harder to provide new and better opportunities for my students to learn. I do not want a paperless program that I scan pages of work into and upload them for students to complete and hand back to me. I want less paper, but not because students can copy it into their annotation app and send it back. I want something more. I have district mandated programs that give me plenty of worksheets if I choose to use them, but what can I put in my LMS that will help the students go deeper in their learning? How can I set up my lessons for students to think about how it all fits together and then solve the problem without being able to Google it or use Wolfram Alpha to show the process?

So here I sit with my computer and the District mandated programs to work out my lessons and fit them into Schoology. In the end it all comes down to the teacher and the lessons. The LMS will be a great tool to distribute the opportunities and activities for students to work from, but the difference between myself and the computer teaching is the opportunities I provide for my students to learn. Schoology will be the program  I will use for my class because of the many options it has. Even with a Learning Management System, I will still need to provide the learning.