Back to work!

Our Institute Day was this past Monday. August 12th. Abbie's birthday. It was really early this year because a few of the districts that belong to the special education cooperative that I work for had early starts. What is nice is that I am not yet back at work full-time. Three days this week, four next and then back at it full tilt the week of the 26th. It is not a bad transition.
Usually for Institute Day I just sit and listen. This year I was asked to facilitate a break-out session. I was so honored! I was asked to present information about iPads and classroom ideas. I presented twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. It was really fun! It was a 45 minute session, so I did not have much time. I decided to talk about four of the things that have been the most well received in past classes that I have taught. The first was guided access, otherwise known as locking someone into an app so they cannot exit it . This is extremely helpful when you have, for example, a fourth grade student working on a writing assignment on Notes on the iPad and when you are not looking, he exits Notes and starts playing Subway Surfer or another fun game. I also showed how to enable restrictions so that students cannot install/uninstall an app or take pictures, etc. Then I showed two very adaptable apps, Decide Now and Book Creator. Amazing apps that educators can do sooooo much with... and very easily.
Institute Day also included our speech language pathologists unit meeting (always fun and interesting) in addition to two other breakout sessions. For my other two breakout sessions, I attended sessions about social media as it relates to educators. An attorney from the law firm that represents my special ed coop presented. It was FASCINATING! It was also very scary, too. The attorney (who looked and sounded just like Kimberly who cuts my hair!) said in a perfect world, none of their clients would text, email, blog, facebook, tweet, etc.She also said she understood that everyone does use social media to a certain extent.
I worked in my classroom for the last two days and made tons of progress. Almost ready for kids.
Tomorrow I will continue my transition into the new school year with a day off. It's all good :)