I had the pleasure of attending the second annual PioNear Summit on the weekend in Austin Texas for the second year in a row. The group has grown considerably from last year with approximately 90 PioNears attending this year plus a growing Nearpod team. The summit began with Guido Kovalskys speaking about the focus on community. Once again Guido delivered an enthusiastic keynote, noting how the community has grown. I was particularly impressed that 5.4 million students have taken a Nearpod VR fieldtrip.
We also had a chance to meet up with the Nearpod team and learn about the some of the amazing new launches coming such as the Ready to Run PD and Nearpod for ELL. We then broke out into small sessions and I had the opportunity of hearing from some innovative ideas happening at Hialeah Gardens. Two of my favourite ideas were using Nearpod for community and parent meetings. It had me thinking how this would be very beneficial for parents who could not attend the meeting, by allowing them to access the information digitally afterwards. As well, I loved hearing about the school’s Tech Troopers group, consisting of students who helped solve technical issues in the school.
Our second day began with Josh Tappan the PioNear program director who talked about some of the exciting changes coming to the PioNear program. In addition, we heard about some new Nearpod for Subs lessons and Nearpod Original Content that is in the process of being developed. The afternoon was one of my favourite parts with a PioNear Unconference. I had the chance to participate in two great dicsussions around STEAM and VR with Nearpod.
The best part of the conference was the collegiality in the group, connecting with some amazing people and the informal conversations around learning. Participants came from not only North America but Netherlands, Demark, Serbia and the UK. I am truly grateful to be part of the growing and creative PioNear Community! It really was a wonderful weekend of community building and hearing about the exciting developments that are going to be happening in the upcoming year to continue to help teachers create engaging and rich learning environments with and for their students.