Vermont Fest 2024

Conference welcoming remarks and daily announcements.

An information secession on the Technoloy and AI available today for protection of your facility and the people in it. This is not a product demonstration it an info secession with Live and recorded demonstration of how to leverage AI to improve your current security solution, how to design an effective solution, how to get the support you need. Major topics: weapon and threat detection, allow or deny authorized access, real-time alerts, reduce false alarms, improved situational awareness, forensic research via simple words, automatic emergency response, predictive security, and customer behavior analysis.

Please join our panel discussion that will be hosted by Alex Webster at SPC. Panel Members will be Peter Drescher (EWSD), Tina Scheindel (OSSD) and Nate Gingras (HUUSD).
How do you deal with Personally Identifiable Information? How do you deal with confidential data on devices that leave the district? How do you manage your inventory of copiers and printers? How does print management software help make the district staff more efficient and save money?

These questions and more will be discussed by our panelists.

Josh, Chris, and Mark have real conversations, real arguments, and real banter on IT issues and trends in K12 Schools. In this session, the guys will discuss AI and other hot items in K12 and how tech depts should prepare.

The Vermont Agency of Education would like to have a Ed-Fi Question and Answer session where we can discuss the current Ed-Fi deployment for state reporting. We also wish to review our data governance plans and other areas where we would like to use Ed-Fi to help the state collect and use data in meaningful ways.

Opening remarks and Opening Keynote with Richard Culatta, CEO, ISTE

Harnessing AI for Digital Good in Education
Join Richard Culatta, CEO of ISTE+ASCD and author of Digital for Good, for his keynote address at this year's Vermont Fest. As we stand at the intersection of artificial intelligence and education, Culatta will explore how we can leverage AI to enhance learning experiences and what we need to do to prepare students to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital world. Culatta will also discuss strategies for creating conditions for healthy tech use at home and school.

This round table will engage with Tech Directors, Network Administrators, and other district personnel on the technical “side of the house” about ensuring back-up strategies, building in best practice cybersecurity methods, and equipment, and considering how a consortia model might serve needs of many of the smaller districts struggling with these issues. This session is seeking a robust conversation on what needs there are in this realm and what a model might look like that could leverage the back-end, back-up, infrastructure to ensure some cyber safe and redundant systems. Come and bring your ideas and needs to this round table discussion.

FHTMS SOAR Students plan an interactive session geared for participants who are in various parts of their journey toward active antiracism work. S. O. A. R. students will briefly describe their work before launching into practical "hands-on" activities designed to allow participants to
• reflect on their identities and the need for this work
• improve on “Speak up” strategies guided by the work of Teaching Tolerance
• explore both individual and collective aspects of antiracism work
• create tools that can immediately be taken back to your school setting to unapologetically interrupt and disrupt racism within our school systems.

Join Liz von Nagy for an engaging presentation on library advocacy. Discover how you can share the power of what's happening in your library with all stakeholders; students, teachers, administrators, parents, and school board members, and how your advocacy can affect your library. Participants will learn tips and tricks for creating infographics, how to pull information from Destiny Library Manager, and how to center student voice in your advocacy efforts.

FHTMS SOAR Students plan an interactive session geared for participants who are in various parts of their journey toward active antiracism work. S. O. A. R. students will briefly describe their work before launching into practical "hands-on" activities designed to allow participants to
• reflect on their identities and the need for this work
• improve on “Speak up” strategies guided by the work of Teaching Tolerance
• explore both individual and collective aspects of antiracism work
• create tools that can immediately be taken back to your school setting to unapologetically interrupt and disrupt racism within our school systems.

Is your library prepared for a book challenge? Is your district reviewing library or school board policies? How do you handle student privacy and the freedom to read? Where are the boundaries of the First Amendment in a school library?

This session can help you prepare against censorship and implement vital intellectual freedom best practices within your library.

Meg is was trained through Law for Librarians, a program of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF). It is designed to provide librarians with information about the legal fundamentals of the First Amendment, intellectual freedom, and privacy in order to help ensure legal, consistent library policies and practices.

This session will look at how AI is starting to impact your network from a management and security perspective. We will look at what tools are available today and what we should expect in the future and how you can prepare. Part of the session will be dedicated to a round table forum to hear from the group regarding what schools are doing today and how you would like to leverage AI to improve how you are able to protect and manage your network.

Apple’s foray into enterprise device management has been a series of incremental changes that has resulted in current best practices standing in conflict with traditional fleet deployment. Fortunately, Apple has also introduced new tools to deal with these legacy challenges so that now is the prime time to prepare for the future of Apple devices using your organization’s Apple School Manager instance.

In this session, we will set the stage by surveying the history of Apple device deployment in education environments, one which was characterized by user-created Apple IDs that were barely a step away from personal ownership. We will then focus on the two primary challenges this has produced, namely, devices being rendered unusable by Activation Lock when transferring users and the existence of user identities that appear to be organization-based but exist without oversight. We will then do a deep dive in understanding the cause of these issues and establish clear processes for avoiding and ameliorating these situations using tools made available by Apple, including the newly announced process for directly converting Personal Apple Accounts to Managed Apple Accounts.

Phoenix Books will be hosting a book sale including titles from Keynote speaker, Charles Waters and titles from the Red Clover, Golden Dome, and Green Mountain Book Awards.

Opening Remakrs and Keynote with author and poet, Charles Waters.

In this session, we will explore how artificial intelligence is transforming the educational landscape. Educators will gain access to a practical toolkit filled with AI-driven tools and resources that can enhance and streamline instruction to foster student engagement. As we navigate these new technologies, we'll also discuss the magnitude of change required—rethinking traditional teaching practices, integrating AI into everyday learning, and ensuring equity and access for all students. This session is designed to empower teachers to confidently adopt AI, transforming their classrooms for the future.

Teachers will learn how to effectively use tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Magic Schools AI to enhance lesson planning, curriculum development, and classroom instruction. Discover how these tools can work for you to create differentiated lessons, generate lesson summaries that meet IEP accommodations or provide summaries for students who miss class due to illness, adjust reading assignments to appropriate Lexile levels, create newsletters for families, brainstorm project ideas of various DOK levels, and even provide feedback on simple formative assessments.

These tools can also be valuable for generating and proofreading email responses to challenging interactions. Beyond being a search engine or a tool for asking questions, AI can serve as a collaborative partner, helping teachers continually evolve their lessons to be more engaging.

By the end of the session, participants will gain valuable insights into how to make these tools work effectively in their specific educational areas. They will also have a better understanding of why these tools should not be blindly banned and how to incorporate them into lessons to demonstrate appropriate AI usage.

While most students may not have direct access to these tools at school, the reality is that they are likely using them on their personal devices and accounts. As educators, we can teach and model appropriate use of these tools to help students understand how they can be used to assist learning. For example, we can demonstrate how to ask effective questions to AI to get started on a large research project, such as "Gemini, can you provide me with a list of 10 resources to help me understand the use of electromagnetism in MRI machines?"

Coffee Break -- come to the ballroom to also check out the bookstore, get a book signed by Keynote speaker Charles Waters, and see the Maker Space exhibit and Robotics exhibit.

A real challenge, and opportunity, for educators, is to learn how to use AI thoughtfully, safely, and productively.  Hear about concerns and cautionary tales, as well as ways to address the challenges. The primary focus, however, will be on the positive ways you can use AI.  Using AI to summarize the vast AI offerings, this human will add current research, teaching strategies, and a comprehensive overview. See AI apps that will save you time, and quickly create teaching materials that supplement your current curriculum.  Other apps will demonstrate how AI can be used for brainstorming, creating first drafts and editing.  There will be an overview of amazing apps that assist children and adults with special needs.  A collection of anecdotes, research findings, and interviews will provide examples of successful uses of AI for professional productivity, instruction, and activities that will stir your imagination.  Come be amazed, inspired and informed.  Bring your spirit of adventure and sense of humor. At the end there will be a light-hearted summary and raffle prizes.

This workshop showcases how AI can be a valuable tool in jumpstarting the creative process in classrooms. Attendees will learn how to leverage AI to generate thematic and seasonally-appropriate writing prompts, create content for drama and public speaking classes, and even draft entire scripts for media arts projects. Additionally, AI can help with generating templates, forms, and lists, allowing teachers and students to concentrate on the more creative and nuanced aspects of their projects.

Join Department of Library staff to learn more about the free databases, discussion sets, interlibrary loan services, and professional development resources that the Department offers. Discover resources to support you in providing accessible reading materials to students with IEPs. Learn about the ways that the Department support Vermont youth and how you can take advantage of these free resources.

Do you have a maker space and you don't know how to organize it or get students to use it? At U-32 we've designed our maker space to be user friendly and user independent. After visiting Generator in Burlington, VT we modeled a badge system that they use to ensure that our students could access the space after receiving training. They earn badges for completed trainings and can use those tools/materials independent of supervision. It is still a work in progress, but we've seen major growth in the usage of the tools. I will share what we've done, templates for creating your own badge and accountability system and open the floor to discussion and recommendations of tools.