By Lynn Dunn, Mark Hess, Barbara Ozminkowski, Jennifer Phillips, and Pamela Shoemaker
Veteran sixth grade teacher Maureen Bratke received a new teaching assignment for
the upcoming school year: teaching
in a one-to-one laptop classroom. She
started to get nervous as she thought
about re-creating all of her lessons and
struggling to answer endless technology questions from her students.
Luckily, her district had her covered.
Walled Lake Consolidated Schools, a
public school district in southeastern
Michigan serving more than 15,000
students, has hosted an annual educational technology conference called
Spice It Up! every August for the past
six years. We modeled our one-day
mini-event after the ISTE annual
conference and exposition as well as
that of our local ISTE affiliate, the
Michigan Association for Computer
Users in Learning (MACUL). At Spice
It Up! Walled Lake teachers are both
the presenters and the attendees, and
they have a shared goal of moving the
district forward and ensuring that our
teachers and administrators understand why staff and students must have
access to and use technology every day.
Teachers Teaching Teachers
When Spice It Up! began in 2005, the
sessions were more tool focused, but
it has since evolved to emphasize how
technology can support the curriculum in ways that motivate students
and save time for teachers.
At last year’s conference, Bratke
attended one of 50 breakout sessions taught by her colleagues to
learn about using digital storytelling
as an instructional strategy in her
social studies classroom. Although
she was still hesitant about tackling
such a technology-intensive project
come September, the ideas, teaching
materials, and sample lessons she
received at the conference bolstered
her confidence.
“Having this conference before
school starts allows me to begin the
year with fresh and innovative learn-
ing activities that will engage students
in meaningful and relevant ways,” she
says. “I like that classroom teachers
present proven ideas and lessons they
have used with great success in their
classroom with students.”
The conference, which draws more
than 300 teachers and administrators,
works because teachers are teach-
ing teachers. The presenters share
the technology tools they know and
demonstrate how they’ve integrated
them into their daily classroom activi-
ties. In this way, the conference makes
the most of the knowledge that’s al-
ready embedded in the district, saving
a lot of money and creating a culture
of collaboration along the way.
The results speak for themselves.
Technology is already part of Walled
Lake’s culture, thanks to a supportive
school board and administration, innovative teachers, and a community that
expects technology use in the schools.
But the conference has provided the
extra motivation and instruction that
many Walled Lake teachers needed to
incorporate new tools into their classrooms. Seeing what other educators at
their grade level or building level are
doing gives many the courage to try
those lessons with their students. (See
“Proof Positive,” page 21.)
For example, second grade teacher
Jennifer Phillips attended Barbara
Ozminkowski’s session on blogging in
the elementary classroom three years
ago. Since then, all of Phillips’ second
graders have blogged weekly and published their work from Writer’s Workshop on the blog.
And because both the presenters
and attendees are colleagues who live
near each other, it is easy for the col-
laboration to continue after the con-
ference is over. We have seen a ripple
effect as teachers informally share the
technology-infused lessons and ideas
they learned at the conference with
other colleagues. Phillips, for one,
shared her newly acquired knowledge
about blogging with a fellow second
grade teacher at her school, and as a
result, three more classes of students
are learning to blog. What’s more,
sharing curricular goals and objec-
tives during the conference sessions
provides an avenue for collabora-
tive dialogue throughout the school
year. For instance, even though they
are at different schools, Phillips and
Ozminkowski have become active
members of each other’s personal
learning communities as they contin-
ue to share the latest on new software
and widgets as well as student success
stories in the blogosphere.
