A failure is still a success, because you've learned from it and grown from it. How can we create an environment where we talk about failures? First full day of ISTE, I spend the morning going to poster sessions and playgrounds. Then I go to my first session. I thought I would go to ISTE and learn ALL the educational technology things (cue the all the things meme guy). I thought people would only share their successes, because that's often what we hear at conferences and see on social media. Wrong. So delightfully wrong I was. And I started seeing that at my first session titled "#EpicFailures by Women Leaders in Educational Technology #oktoplayoktofail." The panel consisted of Kelly Sain, Heather Lister, Sarah Thomas, Rusul Alrubail, Kim LeClaire, and Diane W. Doersch. In addition to the two quotes above that were taken from this panel, Heather Lister also said this during the discussion, "If we normalize sharing our failures, if others see people they idolize sharing failures, we'll realize there's no such thing as a perfect leader, but until we see that, we hold ourselves to it. It's doing everyone a favor to talk about failures."
These brave, failure warriors gathered a large group of strangers in a room, shared their own failures, had us share out our career epic failures at our tables, and managed to make me feel empowered when I left the session. Talking about failure is vulnerable and scary, but once it's out there, and you see others sharing theirs, there truly is something freeing and empowering about that. Ironically I then proceeded to try to show up to my BYOD session an hour early, and then stumbled upon Carl Hooker having a Fail Fest in ISTE Central. One thing he mentioned was the barriers to creativity. He listed anxiety about being wrong, discomfort with unknown, fear of
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My setup mistakes My school talks a lot about grit, learning pits, and growth mindset. I definitely started out in the pit and revisited it a few times while I was working on setting up our two 3D printers! I didn't know anything about setting up a 3D printer and had never used one before when I sat down to do it about two weeks ago. If I can set one up, you certainly can too, but maybe you can avoid a few of the rookie mistakes I made.
The printer I ordered (New Matter's MOD-t) came with a few setup instructions and directions on where to go for full instructions and pictures on their website. The website's instructions were thorough and very user friendly. They made setup easy! I got one of the printers up and running on the counter using my laptop quickly and was amazed at how easy it was...but then I realized I had made two mistakes that would need fixed: Mistake #1 was setting up the first of two printers through my teacher laptop instead of through the computer it'd be hooked up to on a regular basis. I thought we'd be able to house the printers on the counter and print wirelessly. Nope! The printers do have that capability, but my space just can't support that the way I wanted, and the computers I'll need to use for printing are all hardwired to the internet. So I then quickly enlisted the help of our building technology specialist, who helped me remove two of the computers to put a 3D printer on each end of that front row of two of computers. We had to undo the wiring of those, and then I setup the wiring of the printers to connect them to those computers. As long as you have the right intentions and priorities that work for you and your students, there isn't a wrong starting list. Everyone starts with different items. As long as you have the right intentions and priorities that work for you and your students, there isn't a wrong starting list. With the grant money I mentioned when I talked about budgeting and planning here, it was important to me to get a balance of tech and non tech items, but I also didn't have a lot of money and needed to be extra frugal. With my starting items, I also wanted to get things students could explore more independently and in the library. This was before I knew I'd be able to turn a computer lab into a designated makerspace, which I'll be undertaking this school year.
The starting list from the grant money:
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