I decided to embark on a creative project last week. I created a guide on how to make courses in Schoology more aesthetically pleasing, AKA Mattea's Guide to Making Schoology Pretty. This can sometimes be challenging, given some of the current design constraints. This is my first project where I've added a little more personality and humor and I feel pretty pleased with the results. Click the image below to open the guide. Feel free to share with others. Enjoy!

​This leads me to my second recommendation. If you have never listened to the Harry Potter audiobooks, you are missing out. The narrator does an incredible job bringing the story to life, with unique voices for each character. He somehow manages to sound like Hermione while still sounding like a story narrator. This had been my newest obsession and I have found myself on to the third book in a matter of a couple of weeks. I have thoroughly enjoyed re-reading the series this way and find myself sneaking in more Harry Potter every time I take public transit to work, wash the dishes, or work on laundry. I even sometimes listen to it while working out. Who says that you can't read and be active at the same time? 

I was so happy to spend the day surrounded by other education and edtech enthusiasts at #edcampdenver. Going to an edcamp always makes me feel at home, surrounded by my people. I always enjoy connecting to other educators and hearing about what they are doing in their classrooms. This is even more true this year, as I do not have a classroom of my own.

First, I make a large number of presentations and visuals as a part of my job. I was excited to learn about https://thenounproject.com/, where there are several icons you can browse to use to represent ideas. I look forward to using this site in the future as I push many of colleagues to create more visual representations of ideas, instead of relying on paragraph-style representations that tend to have little impact.

It was also super nice to connect with a variety of new people. First I connected with Colorado Teacher of the Year, Sean Wybrant, over telling the authentic stories of teachers and students in our K-12 schools. We agreed that there are many stories of students and teachers that need to be shared in order to help improve our education system and help make teaching a sustainable profession. Teachers are selected for The Colorado Teacher of the Year award based upon a nomination process. If you know a teacher who should be nominated for the 2018 award, you should use submit your recommendation on the CDE website here.