Episode Details

Kelli Cannon:
It’s just really fun to see how far education has come.

Megan Dahlgren:
So to be able to take this and learn and see how it's grown from Oregon Trail to you know whatever, however you're using it in your classroom now.

Kelli Cannon:
There are old programs that they used to actually print out and hand out to the attendees and there are topics like WordPerfect and AOL.

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They are supporting teachers in doing groundbreaking work, redefining what traditional learning looks like in the classroom.

On this episode of the Supercast, we talk with a Digital Learning Specialist and an Instructional Coach to explore the history of digital learning, how it's impacting students today, and how teachers are seeing big benefits using the technology that is now at their fingertips.

We're here at UCET in the UEN Homeroom Podcast Studio talking about how UCET impacts your practice and we're talking now with Kelli Cannon. Tell us a little bit about your role in Jordan School District, with UCET, and how being at UCET and being involved has impacted your practice.

Kelli Cannon:
Okay, so yeah, my name is Kelli Cannon. I am a Digital Learning Specialist in Jordan School District and I'm also a UCET Board member. This is my third year on the board and I love everything about UCET. My first UCET conference was my first year of teaching, 2014. It feels like a long time ago. When I think about that time I think we didn't even have laptops. So we had desktop computers and people were just kind of like sitting on the floor with like the first generation iPads trying to learn things and do things and just how much the conference has grown in the last 11 years has been just really fun to see. Just the impact that technology has had on education.

Anthony Godfrey:
So when someone comes to UCET what sorts of things will they learn about in breakouts and keynotes and in talking with vendors?

Kelli Cannon:
Okay, so the way we have the UCET Conference sorted out right now is in strands. In the strands there are different topics so there's like a robotic strand, and there's a tech basic strand, and a tech advanced strand, and so there's a little something for everybody here. There's also leadership and coaching because we have a lot of instructional and digital coaches as well who want to improve their practice. Then coming into this vendor hall as I look around I see a lot of tech companies. This year our theme is “Authentic Intelligence” and it's a little– like we say it's a little bit cheeky to AI in a way. There are so many AI vendors here and how AI is really shaping the landscape of education in Utah right now.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell us more about what “Authentic Intelligence” means. Why that theme?

Kelli Cannon:
So when we were sitting around at our– we planned these conferences a year in advance. So we were sitting around in our meeting last July and we said “We know AI is gonna be really big it's not going away, so what can we do to kind of play off that theme?” So we said, “Let's use AI, but when we say Authentic Intelligence we mean how can we use AI or keep the human skills in a technology-driven world?” So we're still looking for that human input. I think that's what keeps teaching like personalized and relevant is having that human interaction.

Anthony Godfrey:
I really think artificial intellig