What is #ADE2019 and ADE Institute all about? The problem is, if you’ve been to one, then you know what it’s like. If you’ve never been, it’s hard to imagine it.
The hashtag stands for the current institute or event for educators who have had experience with teaching with iPads or Macs from a certain region. There are currently three regions – EMEIA, Asia-Pacific and the America. I was inducted into the community in Europe in 2017 and was privileged to attend the global event last year in Texas as well. This year’s EMEIA event was again in Noordwijkerhout in the beautiful Netherlands.
For this year EMEIA event, ADEs (Apple Distinguished Educators) or educators from 25 countries came together from 27 July to 31 August 2019 to connect and share. There were 170 new ones and 105 so-called „alumni“ – a word meaning previous inductees.
Being an ADE is about all being curious enough to new things in the classroom to engage learners and to support learning. It means you are often the first person to experiment, fail, try again, fall, get back up, master something … transforming classroom experiences and empowering your students to do things their way.
Attending an annual Institute means ADEs learn new things, exchange ideas, find kindred spirits, collaborate, connect, celebrate and conspire (in a good way) to stretch themselves out of their comfort zone further.
I LOVED the set up of the conference. We heard from the teams at Apple – the ones behind our fave software like Garageband, Keynote, Pages or Swift Playgrounds – but we also got facetime with some of the hard-working people behind Apple Teacher, the Everyone Can Create Materials, or Apple Education Marketing. They made us feel welcome from the get-go and invited us to have conversations with them, even welcoming critical feedback based on our daily use of the software and services. They gave generously of their time and energy and worked hard behind the scenes.
Highlights
A great highlight for me were the possibilities to converse more informally with other ADEs in the Unconference sessions – which meant some volunteered to lead or demonstrate a way of working or tip or a pedagogical topic. I led a session on Tailoring Teacher Trainings, where those at the table shared how they worked in their areas. Very informative! We were also encouraged to mix and mingle everyday at meals, which I took to heart and had GREAT conversations with people I didn’t know before.
Of course an ADE Institute is a chance to meet people face to face you previously just knew by their tweets. I especially loved the interactions with Richard Hopkins („Mr. Wormhole Challenge“) and Jacob Woolcock. Richard kindly helped me create my first #WormholeChallenge – at almost midnight – with iMovie on iPhone and green play doh 🙂
The workshops I attended were an opportunity for me to learn new things: I experimented with ARMakr, making memes in Swift Playgrounds and discovering new features in Keynote.
I got the opportunity to share my impact story with other ADEs. I showed how twitter inspires me almost daily and attending institute has helped me to transform learning experiences of my students in a big way.
Hear more impact stories in Ingvi’s podcast here:
https://t.co/CMTVz3Kfig?amp=1
Another highlight for me was the mentor group I was part of. This year I was honoured to lead a mentor group – we had a great time connecting, reflecting and discussing ways to collaborate.
Inspired to put into action …
There are of course many many things that I learned and that I would like to apply in the classroom. The ideas are both based on apps and methods:
Green Screen with iMovie – the possibilities are endless. Students can record themselves with different backgrounds and in different scenes (both photo and video). These can be used for dialogues, stories or presentations. There are 3 methods I’d like to try – the #WormholeChallenge method, the video-against-green-background method and using slides in Keynote method.
Bingo and Dingo – This was a great icebreaker, enabling a large group to mingle and feel comfortable with each other right away. The idea to take selfies right into the Keynote template is simple yet quite effective. The Dingo part means you take Bingo and go deeper, finding people for your grid who have created 6-word-story.
100 ideas in 10 minutes – During a breakout session called „The Pitch“ we got into groups and brainstormed solutions to set challenges. I had led a pitch myself.
‚How might we reimagine the meaningful teaching of digital literacy for all teachers and students?’
The response and results of the breakout session were phenomenal. The method was even more fascinating. Over the course of a single hour, more than 100 ideas were generated and evaluated! First, there was the telling stories phase, followed by a brainstorming phase, which were then evaluated (the top 5 plus one **wild one** were chosen), followed by a „heat mapping“ phase – where the whole group „visited“ all the ideas and gave their input. We didn’t have time for the final phase „NUF“ in which the group debates what ideas are New, Useful or Feasible. A great basis for discussions for PD sessions, workshops and seminars with colleagues!
Battlemania – WOW – what an engaging and exciting evening! I was psyched to take part and had prepped a few tips, but of course all my plans sizzled into nothingness when it was announced that my Battlemania counterpart was Mr. Martin Coutts, who is an expert of everything. Anyway it was loads of fun. It proved to be a historic Battle, with two protagonists Eoin and Ingvi going into an extra round. Their tips are SO GOOD. Check their twitter profiles for more. I’ll be creating a Soundboard, as well as a Sing-a-Long activity for ESL classes.
P.S. Eoin won. Much to the delight of the Irish! 🙂
We bring the noise … to Garageband
Last but not least, we were treated to another mindblowing session by John Danty, who demoed how easy it is (for him!) to compose using Garageband. Among other things, he used the noise makers we brought with us, sampled the sounds into Garageband and created a song out of it.
I had attended one of the workshops on Creating Podcasts using Garageband, but sadly missed the one on creating music and the ensuing #1564Challenge. Thankfully, there are LOADs of examples and easy tutorials on how to get started. Follow the hashtag using this link:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/1564challenge?src=hash&f=live
There was so much more to the whole experience but I’ll stop here for now and address more highlights in individual posts. The best thing about ADE Institute is connecting to people, in small moments, unexpected situations … at lunch time, in line, while waiting for coffee. Great discussions happened everywhere.
ADEs share their work freely and generously online. Follow these hashtags for more: