MRVED Update - Sept 5, 2018

MRVED Business

Welcome back!  The MRVED staff hopes you have had a restful and rejuvenating summer.  The MRVED staff has been busy all summer getting ready for the upcoming school year.  Here are some dates to put on your calendar:

• October 17,2018 - MRVED Common Day - Dave Burgess @ Dawson-Boyd
• January 21, 2019 - MELT @ Lac qui Parle Valley High School
• April 18, 2019 - MRVED Common Day - 

We look forward to seeing all the familiar faces throughout the year as well as meeting new friends.  If there is anything the MRVED can do to assist you in meeting any of your goals, please let one of us know.

Minnesota River Valley CTE Collaborative

Over the past couple years there has been a group of administrators, counselors, higher education, and business people that have been meeting bi-monthly to administer a variety of CTE courses for our students.  This program has mainly been housed out of Minnesota West in Granite Falls.  Over the past year, this collaborative has seen tremendous growth.  As the program grew, administration of the program by a committee became very difficult.  It was decided in the Spring of 2018 to start the process of looking for a director for the collaborative.  The MRVED was chosen as the entity to "host" the program and hire the director.  Bruce Bergeson, longtime Montevideo high school principal, had been a member o the committee since the beginning decided the director position would be perfect for him as he enters retirement.  Bruce was hired as the Director of the Minnesota River Valley CTE Collaborative and began work in early July.

Bruce has been busy creating and communicating the Minnesota River Valley CTE Collaboratives brand and mission.  The collaborative currently consists of RCW, Lakeview, YME, Montevideo, and MACCRAY.  If you would like more information on the program, or would like Bruce to visit with your counselor about the courses, please let him know.  His contact information is:

bbergeson@mrved.net

320-269-9297

Tech Tip - FlipGrid is FREE

Early in the Summer, Microsoft purchased the education tech start-up Flipgrid.  With this purchase, Flipgrid is now FREE!  Flipgrid is an awesome educational tool to incorporate in your classroom.  Students can create selfie videos for a variety of projects.  There are 1000's of examples on their website.  This announcement is huge for a couple reasons.  First, it shows the Microsoft is finally starting to make a play into the educational app market.  This will drive competition and spur so much more development in the Ed Tech world.  Second, Flipgrid is a Minnesota company, and it's always great to see Minnesota companies thrive in the Silicon Valley world of technology.

Teach Like a Pirate - Introduction

Dave Burgess will be our keynote speaker this Fall for the MRVED common day.  Burgess is a phenomenal speaker who will catch your attention from beginning.  If you don't know who Dave Burgess is or have never heard of Teach Like a Pirate, we'll spend the next couple months examining the book.

I highly recommend buying the book and following along.  Last year, we spent most of the Winter/Spring on Innovator's Mindset by George Couros and then had the opportunity to see Couros speak as our Spring keynote.  There were a handful of people within the MRVED that followed along as we highlighted each chapter.  Many of the people that did this, said it made seeing Couros so much better.  They were able to understand and comprehend so much more of the keynote.

Teach Like a Pirate is broken into three parts:
Part 1- Teach Like a Pirate (Passion, Immersion, Rapport, Ask and Analyze, Transformation, Enthusiasm)
Part 2 - Crafting Engaging Lessons
Part 3 - Building a Better Pirate

The ship will set sail in the next update.  We'll examine the first 3 parts to teaching like a pirate; passion, immersion, and rapport.

Show us how you "Teach Like a Pirate" on Twitter by using the #TLAPMRVED or #WeAreMRVED