Vermont Fest 2024

Students and educators can create immersive 3D VR and AR experiences using CoSpaces. I will show you how younger students with little coding experience and older students with text-based coding experience can all create dynamic 3D environments that show off their learning while developing transferrable STEAM skills. Teachers can create classes and create/access assignments within the platform (which is browser-based on computers and an app on iPads). CoSpaces projects can incorporate 360 degree images and can be viewed in CoSpaces, online, or even through VR headsets for a truly immersive experience. Come see how students can create projects that allows them to connect to their community by creating an interactive virtual tour or creating a virtual world to tell a story, all while using cutting edge technology that is easily accessible. Participants will get and share lesson and project ideas and be able to jump into the CoSpaces environment to start building their own 3D experiences during this workshop. 1 month trial codes will also be available to further try it out on your own and with your students.

​Google Slides Presentation for CoSpaces Session​​​

Don't forget your laptop! Join us for a hands on experience with CoSpaces - a web-based interactive 3D environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, and computational literacy. Learn how, through project-based play, your elementary and middle school students can meet ISTE and CSTA computer science standards while creating and sharing projects from any subject matter!

Information on the ISTE and CSTA standards can be found below.
https://iste.org/standards
https://csteachers.org/k12standards/interactive/

This session is part of the computer science strand from Vermont-CSTA
Presented by CSTA Kristen Wilson & Ben McVety

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.

This presentation will give you all the resources to create this program in your community. For our biography unit last year, instead of students researching a famous person online; we connected with our local seniors citizens. Though digital storytelling, Students used countless skills in this process including creating questions, conducting interviews, embedding technology skills, and developing research skills. Students expand their writing, executive functions, and interpersonal relationships.

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.

This presentation features hands-on projects that compliment good digital citizenship practices.

My projects were inspired by the 6 core topics addressed in the educator’s section of Common Sense Media. During my presentation, I will show projects related to: Balance, Privacy, Digital Footprint, and Kindness. I use the Common Sense Media lessons, and then extend the main ideas into a makerspace project.

These projects are for students in grades K-6. Some projects can be adapted for different grade levels.

You will come away from the presentation with many ideas that you can use right away in your classroom. I will include a few paper templates to take with you. They can be copied and used for a lesson right away.