UTAH EDUCATION NETWORK

Professional Development Newsletter March 27th-31st

Welcome to the UEN Professional Development Weekly Newsletter!

Welcome to UEN's new weekly Professional Development Newsletter! We will be sharing information about UEN resources, courses, and statewide and national resources to help support your work in your classroom. Feel free to share this newsletter with any of your fellow educators!

Spring may have sprung and Summer is right around the corner, but now is a great time to try something new. Maybe it is a new technology or a new technique with a technology you already use, maybe you want to learn about a topic you want to teach in your classroom or you want to build up your skills as an educator. Below you will find some great options for quick on-demand professional development, upcoming free courses from UEN, and some great options for professional development across Utah!

In this week's newsletter you will find:

The newest videos from UEN including Canvas Corner, Adobe Spotlight, and PDTV.
A brand new episode of UEN Homeroom spotlighting students from the American Indian Resource Center at the University of Utah
New course spotlight on PD Trainer Kayla Towner's new course on Minecraft
Upcoming Professional Development opportunities from UEN, Utah Rural Schools Association, Show Up for Teachers, and the Utah Teacher Fellows
Resource Spotlight: Artificial Intelligence in Education

As always, feel free to share this newsletter with your fellow educators!

UEN Videos - On Demand Professional Development

Utah's Online School Library Quick Tips Reels

Check out this quick video on how to use Scrible in Utah's Online School Library!

Canvas Corner: How to Float Images on Canvas Pages

In this Canvas Corner episode, Val shows how to use the HTML editor in Canvas to adjust images and improve the look of your courses easily.

Adobe Spotlight - Mastering the Animate From Audio Tool

Get ready to take your school projects to the next level with the “animate from audio” tool in Adobe Express! In this step-by-step tutorial, Rob shows you how to turn a simple voice recording into a fun animated video clip.

PDTV: Critical Thinking

In this episode of UEN PDTV, host Katie Blunt travels to Launch High School in Iron County School District to visit English Language Arts teacher Cody Christensen and his students. First, Cody shows us his unique approaches to the blended learning process, and then one of his students shares how this type of learning allows them opportunities to be critical thinkers.

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UEN Homeroom Podcast

Join hosts Dani and Matt in this episode of UEN Homeroom as they welcome guests Anisha Marion and Leonard Almero from the American Indian Resource Center to discuss ways educators can support Native American learners in K-12 classrooms. From cultural sensitivity to awareness training, learn how to create a more inclusive learning environment for your students.

Click on the link below to listen and subscribe!

Students from the American Indian Resource Center

Join hosts Dani and Matt in this episode of UEN Homeroom as they welcome guests Anisha Marion and Leonard Almero from the American Indian Resource Center to discuss ways educators can support Native American learners in K-12 classrooms. From cultural sensitivity to awareness training, learn how to create a more inclusive learning environment for your students.

uen-homeroom.simplecast.com

UEN Course Spotlight

UEN's Professional Development team has a lot of new, exciting courses for our Spring 2023 schedule. One very exciting course is Kayla Towner's Minecraft Education - It's More Than Just A Game! In the course, teachers will learn the basics for navigating Minecraft and developing it as a tool for their classrooms. The course guides participants to encourage their students to think creatively, work collaboratively, and engage in problem-solving immersive environments. In this course, participants will be able to apply Minecraft to their own curriculum and show the importance of collaborative learning. In the end, participants will create or remix their own lesson within Minecraft and see how Minecraft is more than just a game.

Unfortunately, this course is currently full, but it will be offered in Fall of 2023. Remember that all UEN courses are free and open to any educator in Utah.

You can see all available courses at this link. Summer 2023 courses open for registration on Saturday, April 1st.

UEN Professional Development In Your School

The UEN Professional Development Team is excited to come out to your school and work with your teachers on a variety of topics ranging from podcasting to Minecraft, digital literacy to a variety of technology tools (Adobe, Nearpod, Google, Canvas, Canva, Utah's Online School Library, and eMedia) and more. Your school can request FREE professional development using this link.

Check out some of the recent professional development requests across Utah below:

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UEN at Utah Coalition for Educational Technology 23

UCET23 was a great event for Utah educators and UEN was there to help support the conference. UCET President and UEN Sr. Technical Trainer Matt Winters was so excited during setup with former UCET President and UEN Product Manager Dani Sloan! The entire UEN Professional Development Team were at the conference sharing their best practices on everything from short videos to AR/VR to robotics.

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UEN at Utah Council of Teachers of English 2023

Matthew Winters and Val O'Bryan from the UEN PD team were at the Utah Council of Teachers of English Conference this past week. Matt keynoted a pair of sessions called Curating Curiosity, while both Matt and Val presented two sessions on Shakespeare and Technology and Digital Feedback Systems with English students.

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UEN at the Utah Council of Teachers of Math 2023

Katie Blunt and Katie Garrett shared their work on the eMedia Math Hub at the recent Utah Council of Teachers of Math conference.

Upcoming Professional Development Opportunities

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UEN Leading Schools - June 20th-23rd

The Utah Education Network is excited to announce Leading Schools Summit, a multi-day summit designed to provide principals with the inspiration, support and professional learning opportunities they need to lead student-centered PCBL learning initiatives in their schools. Link for more information.

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UETN Tech Summit - June 11th-12th

Join more than 300 participants representing about 122 organizations from K12, Higher Ed, Healthcare and IT Exhibitors. Link for more information.

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Utah Rural Schools Association Conference - July 12th-14th

The conference provides hands-on and break-out sessions that will focus on insights and interventions with strategies to provide professional learning to improve student outcomes. There will be sessions focused on strengthening mental and behavioral health supports, student supports, grading practices, literacy best practices, strengthening the guaranteed curriculum at each school, and developing a culture of investment. Link for more information.

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ISTELive 2023 - June 25th-28th

Join Utah educators at ISTELive in Philadelphia! ISTELive has hundreds of sessions from thousands of educators across the country and around the world. Link for more information.

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Show Up for Teachers - July 19th

Join 1500 attendees from around the state including educators from 37 districts and hundreds of educator advocates for a conference spotlighting the best in Utah education. Link for more information.

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Utah Teacher Fellows Applications - Due April 15th

The Utah Teacher Fellows program has been carefully designed to develop the competencies of great educators, providing them with tools to engage their colleagues and generate solutions to education challenges. To date, Hope Street Group Utah Teacher Fellows have met with state and federal decision-makers, attended regional and national convenings, and been featured in multiple publications. See how teacher fellows view the program in the short video here. Link for more information.

Resource Spotlight: Artificial Intelligence in Education

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a very hot topic in education right now. It seems that there are so many options for exploring AI in classrooms. Below are links to some great options for exploring AI to understand how it might affect your classroom!

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Google Bard

Google Bard is a new chatbot that is right now in Beta, meaning it is still experimental. You can join the Beta and see how it might be included in Google Workspace in the future.

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Adobe Firefly

Another AI in Beta, Adobe Firefly can be currently reserved to use in your Creative Cloud account (which is free to all Utah Educators). It promises AI-aided video editing, image creation, and 3D object creation.

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Canva Text to Image Generator

Canva, a popular digital design tool, has added an AI text-to-image generator to all its services. Check out more at this link.

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Eric Curts' The Bionic Educator

Eric Curts, from the popular Google Blog Control Alt Achieve, shared a session on AI called "The Bionic Educator" at UCET23. You can find all his resources at this link.

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Ditch That Textbook: Setting School Policy About AI

Ditch That Textbook's Matt Miller posted an article about some considerations about AI and school policies. You can find that article here.

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Jethro Jones' The PASS Method

Jethro Jones offers a way to help educators navigate using AI to help build capacity in their classrooms. You can read the article at this link.

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