Vermont Fest 2024

While policy and guidelines are only one part of a district's response to the advent of genAI, they are a critical foundation for your district’s approach. A well-crafted policy and resources to guide classroom practice help teachers and students navigate the shifting landscape of technology that surrounds us. In this hands-on session, we will explore the free AI Policy Starter Kit as a starting point for districts and schools to craft thoughtful and proactive generative AI guidance and policy aligned with their district needs and priorities. We will explore resources in the kit that spark conversations about the range of factors and conditions that go into creating genAI policy, and concrete steps that lead to draft policy and guidance language. Using case studies to guide our thinking, we will create a thoughtful and custom approach to district policy and resources that help our teachers and students feel confident in their ability to navigate complexity with a critical lens.

Reframe your thinking of AI as a thought partner and you open a whole new world of possibilities! Join me and explore a few different tools that teachers AND students (yes, students UNDER 13) can use. Tools like SchoolAI and MirrorTalk. Use SchoolAI to help you brainstorm ideas, work through writer's block, or help a student narrow down a research topic. With MirrorTalk, students can reflect on their work and get spot on feedback to help them think about next steps. Both tools have Student Privacy Agreements in Vermont and are ready to use!

Join us for a hands on experience with Co-Spaces - a web-based interactive 3D environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, and computational literacy. Learn how high school students can meet CSTA computer science standards across several content disciplines while creating and sharing 3D computational artifacts.
https://csteachers.org/k12standards/interactive/
This session is part of a Computer Science strand brought to you by Vermont-CSTA
This session CS for High School students using Co-spaces is presented by Vermont CSTA Chapter Leaders:
~Kristen Wilson & Ben McVety

In this hands-on workshop, attendees will learn how digital storytelling and immersive gameplay can transform learning. The fast-paced session will introduce you to the interactive digital narrative, Inanimate Alice, and see how to integrate it to support your SEL curriculum. Attendees will:
- Learn the History of Inanimate Alice
- Explore what research says about the transformative power of interactive digital narratives in learning spaces
- Hear from one educator who is using Inanimate Alice to dive into digital storytelling with 3rd - 6th graders
- Explore Inanimate Alice using their own devices
All attendees will have access to the first episode of the series and the Kick off with Inanimate Alice course so you and your students can begin your adventure.

Jill will lead a conversation on SWANK, the streaming service brought to you at a discount through the help of VITA-Learn. Previously provided through the VT Department of Libraries for free to libraries, SWANK is a streaming service that provides easy access to learning materials. Jill will share how to connect with Jeff Mao of VITA-Learn to obtain discount pricing and login credentials. She will share how they have leveraged the use of SWANK at U-32 and will open discussion to the room for sharing their usage and ideas.

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.

This workshop aims to equip educators and school staff with a better understanding of copyright law and fair use principles as they apply to educational settings. Participants will explore key concepts of copyright, the importance of respecting intellectual property, and practical applications of fair use in the classroom/library. Through interactive discussions and real-world scenarios, attendees will gain insights into how to navigate copyright issues when using multimedia resources, creating educational materials, and incorporating student work. By the end of the workshop, participants will feel more confident in making informed decisions about copyright and fair use, fostering a respectful and legally sound learning environment.