Vermont Fest 2024

This session is designed to answer your questions to help you better manage your network. This will be a round table format where we will facilitate an open discussion around answering your general network questions. Specific attention will be spent on providing tips and tricks to more efficiently optimize your network based on feedback provided by attendees. Session will be interactive but some topics to be covered include:Demo of New Aruba Central

• A look at WIFI 7
• Leveraging Google Workspace to authenticate users
• How to build role-based security policy for your users
• A look at SASE & SDWAN and how this could improve your network security and management
• How to evaluate your network in real-time & proactively remediate issues
• Review of complementary support & training resources

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

This hands-on workshop will provide educators with the tools and knowledge needed to integrate 3D printing technology into any curriculum, enhancing student engagement and bringing learning to life. Participants will explore how 3D printing can be used across different subjects like math, science, history, and art. By the end of the session, educators will walk away with actionable lesson ideas and the confidence to implement 3D printing in their own classrooms.

Leverage the power of 3D platforms and virtual makerspaces to create opportunities for all students to dive into emerging STEAM careers with real-world STEAM projects. Learn how to design authentic learning activities where students engage in high-fidelity prototyping and learn spatial reasoning, computational thinking and data analysis. This presentation highlights how virtual Makerspaces, specifically Maker's Empire, Tinkercad and Qweebi paired with 3D printing and CAD tools, can break down barriers for students in under-resourced schools or remote areas by providing them with the same hands-on, innovative learning experiences as those in physical Makerspaces.
Reimagining Learning and the Classroom
* Virtual Makerspaces increase access to STEAM by eliminating space and cost issues! They allow for diversity in student choice by making it possible for different students to do different projects simultaneously in class! Virtual Makerspaces are more inclusive by offering ways to adapt the software to students with different needs!
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
* I prioritize Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by introducing 3D design platforms transcending socio-economic barriers, offering free access for children of all backgrounds. As a woman in computer science, I also can offer teachers my a unique perspective to help teachers integrate emerging tools for every student K to 12.

Explore strategies to bring invention design into your learning space (both in and out-of-school) with an introduction to the Young Inventors' Program and Vermont Invention Convention. This K-8 project-based curriculum is divided into grade level units, meets core standards, including the NGSS, and provides hands-on STEM activities to take students on an invention journey through the design process, culminating in a showcase of original inventions that may lead to local and national competitions, including the Vemront Invention Fair on February 8, 2025. Learners will have an opportunity for expression and creativity as they develop and practice higher-order thinking skills. This workshop will provide you with all the resources you need to bring the Young Inventors’ Program to your classroom, after school progrmak, library or other learning enviroment – all for FREE!

This interactive workshop aims to equip participants with essential principles of design for effective visual communication using Canva for Schools (a free for schools). Attendees will learn to create visually appealing materials that demonstrate and model effective communication skills. While Canva also offers tools to create slide decks, videos, websites and more, we'll focus on using the Canva toolbox to design effective posters/flyers/infographics to print or share digitally. Presenter will also share experience acquiring and managing a wide-format printer in the school library setting.