Seminar increases teachers’ tech knowledge
About a thousand Texarkana area teachers gathered at Texarkana College Thursday to learn the keys to unlock the next level of student learning.
Now in its second year, the Northeast Texas Leading and Learning Conference featured top tech speakers and classes to help bring teachers further into the future. Teachers from Texarkana College, Texarkana Independent School District, Liberty-Eylau ISD and Red Lick ISD listened to internationally-known educator George Couros speak about innovative leadership, teaching and learning. teacher and technology. Couros is a school administrator author of the book “The
Innovator’s Mindset; Empower Learning, Unleash Talent and Lead a Culture of Creativity.” Trevor Ragan and Felix Jacomino also spoke on changing perceptions and technology integration.
Melissa Motes, director of instructional technology at DeKalb ISD, said the goal of the conference was to give teachers the tools they need in today’s tech-savvy world.
“We provide high-quality professional development for East Texas teachers,” she said. “We brought that here without our teachers having to go somewhere else.”
Motes helped organize a similar event yesterday at DeKalb, where approximately 650 teachers attended from DeKalb, Mount Vernon, Hubbard, Avery, Malta, James Bowie, New Boston, Hart’s Bluff, Atlanta, Redwater and Leary school districts. She said that there was so much interest following the success of last year’s NETX Conference, that they wanted to expand it so more teachers could attend.
“We had such response from the area schools who wanted to be in on it, and obviously we couldn’t host that many people at DeKalb,” she said. “Texarkana College was one of our sponsors last year and they wanted to host the schools in the Texarkana area. So that’s what we did.”
The educators attended breakout sessions on the many teaching tools offered through Google, including classroom, slides, apps, forms and Google Drive. They also learned about digital literacy and identity and how to create a digital footprint for students.
Motes said it was important for teachers to stay on the cutting-edge of technology.
“Our jobs as teachers is to be professional learners and so in order for us to do that, we’ve got to be exposed to the newest trends, the newest things that are out there,” she said. “Technology is changing every day, every year. If we don’t keep up with the changing technology, then we become illiterate.”