Jeff serves as the Executive Director of Vita-Learn. Previously, he has held a number of roles including Senior Director, Common Sense Media and Education Technology Policy Director for the Maine Department of Education.
Wednesday November 6, 2024 1:00pm - 1:10pm EST
Northstar I
Join this interactive roundtable discussion to explore how school districts can align their K-12 technology plans with broader district Strategic Planning Goals and a Portrait of Graduate work. Participants will engage in conversations around critical topics, including the role of facilities, funding, tech infrastructure technology instruction, staffing considerations for adequate tech support, and the development of meaningful, ongoing professional development for teachers. This roundtable fosters collaborative sharing of challenges and best practices, encouraging participants to exchange ideas on ensuring technology initiatives enhance learning, align with district priorities, are future-proof, and provide equitable access for all students.
Director of Technology, Rutland City Public Schools
Patricia Aigner serves as the Director of Technology for the Rutland City Public Schools in Rutland, Vermont. She is licensed as a teacher, principal, and superintendent. In 2020, Patricia received the Frank Watson Lifetime Achievement Award from Vita-Learn. Recently, she was featured... Read More →
Wednesday November 6, 2024 1:00pm - 2:10pm EST
Northstar I
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.
Director of Technology and Innovation, Essex Westford School District
Peter is currently serving as the Director of Technology and Innovation at Essex Westford School District. He is passionate about working with educators to support teaching and learning with technology and in his past role, as State Director of Education Technology in Vermont, was... Read More →
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.
A K12TechPro Podcast. This podcast is about trending K12 technology topics and issues. Josh, Chris, and Mark have real conversations, real arguments, and real banter on IT issues and trends in K12 Schools.
Wednesday November 6, 2024 2:30pm - 3:30pm EST
Northstar I
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.
VT AOE Education Data Administrator, Vermont Agency of Education
James Nadeau is the Education Data Administrator for the Vermont Agency of Education. He is in charge of collecting education data required for Vermont's public and federal reporting requirements. Prior to his role at AOE, he was a web developer and IT consultant.
Wednesday November 6, 2024 3:50pm - 4:50pm EST
Northstar I
School librarians are at the forefront of important conversations about the complicated relationship between generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) and intellectual property. As we see genAI tools showing up in more classrooms, libraries and computer labs, school librarians have the opportunity to be a critical partner in helping students and educators understand the opportunities and implications of our use of these emerging tools.
In this session, we will explore real-world scenarios that dig into the complexity of content creation, ownership and intellectual property rights in a world where genAI is helping people to create art, compose music and write essays. We will discuss specific cases and their potential impact on educational spaces. Through practical strategies and conversation starters, we will work together to prepare ourselves, our colleagues and our students to consider the ethics and the boundaries of what it means to be a writer, a painter, a creator who shares their work with the world.
Online Learning Manager, Collaborative for Educational Services
Suzanne Judson-Whitehouse is the Online Learning Manager and ISTE Certification Trainer for the Collaborative for Educational Services (CES), where she has worked for the past 15 years supporting educators to innovate and explore new ideas around technology, curriculum and design... Read More →
Thursday November 7, 2024 10:00am - 10:55am EST
Northstar I
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.
Our S.O.A.R. Program demonstrates innovative, disarming, and nonthreatening strategies and tactics to combat racism and racist acts in schools. Students are at the forefront of these exceptional and nontraditional efforts. Please feel free to discuss ways in which a program like... Read More →
Thursday November 7, 2024 11:30am - 12:25pm EST
Northstar I
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.
Our S.O.A.R. Program demonstrates innovative, disarming, and nonthreatening strategies and tactics to combat racism and racist acts in schools. Students are at the forefront of these exceptional and nontraditional efforts. Please feel free to discuss ways in which a program like... Read More →
Thursday November 7, 2024 1:45pm - 2:40pm EST
Northstar I
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.
Writing exercises is a 45 minute workshop with an additional Q & A that focuses on the use of figurative language, seeing the world with a poetic eye with the help of some techniques as Metaphors, Similes, Haikus and Senryus. I also emphasize the importance of how to avoid cliches in writing, keeping notebooks, and showing examples of how some of my own notebook ideas turned into published poems. Participants will be able to create their own poems using their learning about poem structure, point of view and tone analysis.
Charles Waters (charleswaterspoetry.com) is an author, actor, children’s poet and educator. His latest book Mascot (co-written with Traci Sorell) has received multiple starred reviews. His other books (co-written with Irene Latham) include: African Town (winner of the 2023 Scott O’Dell Award For Historical Fiction... Read More →
Friday November 8, 2024 10:00am - 10:55am EST
Northstar I
I’ll present about the Game Design class I teach for Winooski Middle School! In the class we play games, think critically about those games, and then use an iterative design process to make fun and interesting modifications of those games! I begin the class with Tic Tac Toe, teach them the optimal strategy, and let them quickly realize that the game is dull when everyone is playing optimally and every game ends in a tie. Students are then tasked with making Tic Tac Toe interesting again by incorporating elements of luck (dice, cards), skill (bottle flipping, bean bag toss), or increasing the complexity to deepen the strategic decision making (larger board, new rules). We go on to explore strategy games, card games, dice games, knowledge games, and social games with students developing their own versions of each.
In this workshop we will go through a quickened version of this process and design our own versions of a card game called Golf!
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.
Librarian, Government Services, Vermont Department of Libraries
April Shaw is the Librarian of Government Services at the Vermont Department of Libraries as well as the Head of Interlibrary Loan. She oversees the statewide resource sharing system (Clover), and facilitates the Vermont Interlibrary Loan Round Table.
One of the deepest ways of learning is to teach, right? The paid version of GPT is $20 a month. It allows you to tell ChatGPT in plain English what you want your original chatbot to do, just like when you use GPT normally! It's like programming while writing an essay. Then, when you test the bot, you can teach it to be better by continuing your dialog with GPT. It also makes images for your bot using DALL-E. Your bot will be available to those with a free GPT account via a link. I'll do a very short demonstration, and then you'll get right to making your chatbots that do almost anything you can imagine.