Apple Distinguished Educator Institute 2018

Where do I even begin? It's been a few years since I've been to ADE Institute and this one did not disappoint! When you find your tribe of people, cling to them... don't let go, and let their wisdom empower you to do amazing things!

Not only does this community push me out of my comfort zone, but we get to walk into so many adventures together.

5k fun run... haven't ran this distance in years. But I made it!

Chatting with Satoru from Japan through his translator about our projects.

In all honesty, I felt like I knew NOTHING going into this week. Let me be transparent: I haven't been using iWork because I've just been doing my thing in Google. Oh my, that was a bad decision! After sitting through just a few sessions on the first day, I couldn't believe the productivity between Pages, Numbers, and Keynote! And now I'm obsessed!

Everyone around me was drawing. On their iPads. With an Apple Pencil. Uh.. hello, I'm like... hey, check out my Google Doc with my typed out notes! haha!

You see, I do have a creative side to me... I balance that well in the classroom with the science I teach. But, I've literally been scared to sketch anything on an iPad. Because anything I've ever created has not looked very good at all! But I gave it a try during a session...and I even animated it in Keynote (woah, gettin' fancy, y'all).

And then I helped do a few sketches for a collaborative project (see the work in progress here)...

And then I had a melt down because I was actually drawing. And it looked pretty decent. Like a full on realization that I have been doing a disservice to my students by not keeping up with the iWork suite! The productivity and flow is so powerful!

Oh, and then there's this moment when I totally admitted my cringing reaction to coding, but guess what... my heart is changing about that too (thanks Yak!).

I truly believe that creativity is the foundation of what we do in the classroom. I've let the noise of others' opinions drown out my own inner voice for long enough and my hope is that this year, I let that creativity flow outside of the walls of my classroom to impact others. Creativity has it's place in the rigorous class and we can no longer tell ourselves that it doesn't. 

I believe that #EveryoneCanCreate is a powerful movement that we all should challenge ourselves to participate in. Grab a friend, take the adventure together, and create something new. Just for fun. For the classroom. To inspire yourself that you are capable of creating amazing things.

Thank you new and old ADE friends for bringing me to that realization!