S’more Time! Who is in the Driver’s Seat? #NCSM14

Who’s in the Driver’s Seat: Last session of the day!

Three of my colleagues and I had the pleasure of presenting at the #NCSM14 conference in New Orleans this week. Our chat was during the last session timeframe… on the last day of NCSM… and our talk was alphabetically last on the list… but we made the most of it! Given the number of sessions and speakers throughout the week whose focus was on formative assessment in mathematics education, our message was on target, despite a sparse, but genuinely inquisitive audience. Thanks to all who stopped by!

First, we hoped to introduce folks to a web-based presentation tool free of slides. It was quite liberating to use Smore to create “flyers” that we hyperlinked to one another. No pressure to obey design rules of “slide etiquette” or fear we wouldn’t get to the final slide of our preso – a free-flowing flyer approach with embedded resources afforded participants direct access to our goodies as we shared. Much more engaging than PowerPoint if you ask me. *Ahem.*

Who’s in the Driver’s Seat? Apparently, none of us! At the NOLA Aquarium

We did not take our use of Smore lightly. We took it quite literally, actually. Knowing our time slot and alphabetical order woes put us in a plight motivated us to promote our talk. Ever in Dan Meyer style, we found ourselves taking photos in a grocery store as we weighed the pros and cons of purchasing Hershey’s chocolate bars in varying sizes and prices, with and without wrappers. After deciding a slightly higher unit price was worth the individually wrapped mini-Hershey bars… 5 bags of marshmallows and 7 boxes of graham crackers later, we assembled 200 (literal) s’mores complete with tags detailing our session. Every step of this s’more assembly process required math and measurement, of course.

Considering Unit Prices and Wrapper Importance

Graham Crackers and Marshmallows En Masse

200 (literal) s’mores to promote our (digital) S’mores!

Yes, we went shopping before the conference. Trust me, it’s not what you think. #200s’mores

After distributing the (literal) s’mores to smiling passers-by Wednesday morning, our (digital) Smore session gave us the opportunity to share a bit about our district’s one-to-one iPad experiences. We highlighted a few handy formative assessment tools and how we use them with students in our math classrooms. With perspectives ranging from elementary school, middle school, and high school, to administrative leadership, we were happy to share more than chocolate.

See my Smore below. To see the Smores from my colleagues, Laura Wright, Laura Ringwood, and Jerri LaMirand, scroll to the bottom of my online flyer and click the provided links.

P.S. We’ve submitted a proposal for NCTM Boston 2015 ~ hope to see you there!

P.P.S. I’ll post a synopsis of all the great stuff I learned, the great food I ate, and the rockstars I met at #NCSM14 later this weekend. Stay tuned – my brain needs time to marinate on everything. And I need sleep. But no chocolate please… anything but chocolate…