This year I had a wonderful time at the Wisconsin Council for Social Studies. I am a current board member of WCSS and found it interesting to be on the planning side of the conference. Attending sessions by some twitter rock stars like Jason Bretzmann, @jbretzmann, teaching us about flipping the history classroom. I was even fortunate enough to win a copy of Camtasia to help me flip my classroom even more.
I attend another innovative educator’s session Steph Gorges, @StephGorges, who shared all sorts of tools for literacy in the Social Studies classroom. A big take away was the introduction to Newsela a tool that lets you level the reading of many news stories. Now that is super cool!
I was able to present about Gamifiaction to another rock star group of enthusiastic educators who are ready to change the way they see their classrooms and the way student experience learning. It went really well. Many of them had great follow up questions and I hope they continue to connect via twitter @mrmatera or this website. #Gamification rocks!
Conferences like these are great opportunities to meet and network with local social studies teachers.