Tuesday 13 May 2014

Organizing a conference, all through GAPPS

Part of my extracurriculars that I do is that I am the co-chair of my school's Transitions Committee.  We work on various projects during the school year to help students enter and then leave high school.  Two years ago, in conjunction with the Positive Climates for Learning Committee and the Healthy Schools initiative, my school ran a conference for grade 8 and 9 girls.  The conference focussed on healthy relationships, healthy eating, leadership and inspiration from notable female athletes.  Our plan had been to do the same for the boys the next year, but the government helped derail that plan.  This year, myself and a few other teachers were adamant that the conference would run.  And this is where GAPPS came in.

Our logo was designed by a grade 10 student
and used for the invitation, t-shirts and banner.

Dwayne Morgan, Spoken Word Artist
Closing the conference

From the beginning, the preparation for the conference was all done via google apps.  We used Docs for meeting agendas which helped for those who couldn't always attend meetings and could add in their comments.  Then for the conference itself I used drawing to create the invitation, embedding the google form the boys would use to select their sessions, t-shirt size and lunch.  I even pushed myself and learned the autocrat add-on so that I could mail merge the information from the form to create personal letters for the attendees with their sessions.  
Myself and Graeme Murray, Sochi bronze medalist
in sledge hockey
Even though the planning was very time consuming, I am grateful for the opportunity to plan with both staff, students and elementary partners.  I had a great team and support from the staff and admin. We had a great response from many people who wanted to be a part of the day, and the best part was that students really enjoyed it!

Its been a while: catching up

Wow! People say that they don't know where the time has gone and for me that is partly true this year. I am sad to say that I have not really updated the blog in much too long, and I apologize to my readers. But I had some good reasons!  First is that I started my M.Ed!  For the next few years I am completing a M.Ed in Educational and Digital Technologies at UOIT.  Then I decided to help out more in the school and became a Student Council Teacher Advisor, which takes up more time than I thought, but is very rewarding.  And then I decided to organize and run a conference.

But now things have died down, and I can finally publish some blog posts that have been percolating in my head since September.  Up soon posts on 20% with my Politics class, Google Camps and the Ontario Google Summit and getting PD going in my school.

So I hope that you check back because I will be posting, I promise :)