I applied to be an Apple Distinguished Educator for the Class of 2017, and wanted to share my application with you. It was a lot of work, and it seems silly to only share this with the ADE judges.
Most of the ADE application was a two minute video–there’s a lot of stuff I wanted to share in that video that didn’t make the cut, particularly the songs I’ve recorded. So, here’s a bunch of EduAwesome stuff related to my application. But first, here’s my application video:
Authentic Author
Here are some of my favorite videos I’ve created. My YouTube channel, with 4500 subscribers and 8.2 million views, is a place where I share my expertise in using technology.
Here are 15 of my favorite ed tech songs I’ve written and recorded. In an earlier draft of my application video, I featured several of these songs. I wanted to give the judges a feel for what I create, and music is a significant part of my identity. In the end, the video flowed much better with one original song under the entire video.
Some of these songs are originals, some are parodies, and some are songs I’ve written with an audience during a conference session using GarageBand. All songs are original recordings. All songs are recorded using GarageBand. Feel free to download and/or use for your own projects.
I’ve created a lot of content to promote powerful ideas for improving teaching and learning. Here are links to some of my favorite content:
- Video in the Classroom, an iTunesU course
- Bill Selak Talks, my personal podcast
- Center for Teaching Excellence, a podcast I founded for Hillbrook School. My favorite episode is iPads, Year 5!
- Hillbrook School Apple Distinguished School book
- A Book of Math Problems, written with my second graders
- I took a photo every day for four years. Here’s the Photo-a-Day project: year four, years 1-3 (1095 continuous days of photos). Currently working on Project 52. I also post to selakphotography.com.
- Blog posts featuring Apple software
Global Ambassador
Let’s connect. Here’s where to find me online. I share my ideas about improving teaching and learning the most (by far!) on Snapchat. If you’re on it, it’s time to jump on. I’m still on Twitter, and share amazing things there, but nearly all of the transformative conversations I’m having are on Snapchat:
Passionate Advocate
Finally, here is the transcript from my ADE video:
Hi, I’m Bill Selak. I write songs. I make movies. I take photos, but most importantly, I reimagine learning experiences.
At Hillbrook School, our learning environment is our 14-acre campus, not just an indoor classroom. We build and launch rockets, and use iPads to capture slo-mo footage, and present the data in a Keynote slideshow.
We capture environmental changes over an entire school year through a sit spot study, deeply looking at small parts of our campus.
When we are in classrooms, we push the boundaries of traditional subjects. Students use Swift Playgrounds to learn to code, and develop computational thinking.
We have a week-long coding event each December where every student on campus spends two hours coding using apps like Swift Playgrounds.
Our photography elective at Hillbrook has evolved into an iPhoneography elective, where students shoot, edit, and publish their images… all on an iPod Touch.
We collaboratively create worlds in Minecraft, sharing globally through presentations at ISTE and our podcast.
In fact, our use of iPads is so transformative that educators from around the world are asking us for advice.
We host guests like the Ministry of Education in Singapore, and work with ed tech organizations to create things like the BOLD Classrooms conference, where we will take a deep dive into online lesson design.
We share our expertise beyond our campus through a school podcast on iTunes. Our school also presented at the NorCal Apple Distinguished School Showcase. On my personal podcast and blog, I talk about improving teaching and learning, and through my iTunes course I share best practices for teaching video in the classroom.
I share these practices at the higher ed level, teaching educators how moviemaking, music production, and universal accessibility can empower student voices.
I present at local and national conferences. In my favorite session, our group collaborated using Garageband to write, record, and publish a song… all in one hour!
The future is getting even brighter at my current school, where we are working on building a makerspace, podcast production studio, and moviemaking studio.
With Apple technologies, we can reimagine educational experiences, and I work to bring those experiences to life every day.
