PreConference Thursday
10:00 - 16:00
Davey Neill
BrainPOP Certification Course (ES)
This pre-conference session is ideal for educators interested in digital tools that address critical thinking, personalized and game-based learning, and assessment. We will also explore strategies for differentiating in STEAM content and beyond.
The session serves as an excellent BrainPOP overview and also constitutes the first step in their Certified BrainPOP Educator (CBE) program. BrainPOP offers a 90 day free trial to all participants of this workshop. Details about the certification program can be found at bpopne.ws/cbegeneral. Earning the CBE distinction includes access to an exclusive Google+ community of educators from around the globe. It’s a forum in which CBEs collaborate around classroom innovation, sharing unique initiatives and discussing best practices and approaches. BrainPOP also uses the Google+ community to to communicate news, opportunities, and events with its CBEs, and collect feedback on a variety of topics. CBEs are the first to know about new developments and may receive the opportunity to beta test upcoming features, advise developers, and more.
This workshop will focus on American English offerings via BrainPOP, BrainPOP Jr., and BrainPOP ESL. BrainPOP resources are also available in world languages such as Spanish, French, and Mandarin.
Stacy Stephens
Systems and Structures to Personalize Student Learning (MS HS)
Personalized Learning, buzzword of the moment, yet stands on a deep research base and a long conceptual journey that has evolved far beyond insuring “voice and choice” for students. But how do we do this with laundry lists of standards and outcomes and content that we are expected to deliver?
We will explore systems and structures to shift ownership of outcomes from teachers to students and create learning environments that empower students to select subject matter, approach and pace of learning. Tom Vander Ark defines student agency as, “…the capacity and the propensity to take purposeful action-the opposite of helplessness.” We can create opportunities to build student agency in the classroom through the personalization of learning and the direct involvement of students in their learning.
Key goals of the session will be for participants to understand the various phases and states of personalized learning and the skills and dispositions needed to support student directed learning in the secondary classroom.
Alfred Olivas and Maliha Iqbal
Building a Coaching Culture: It’s How You “Role!”
The relatively new interest in this collaborative approach to teaching and learning can support wonderful learning experiences for students and incredible growth for teachers.
Participants in this session will examine the many support functions, as well as the importance of trust, rapport and relationships in the role of a coach. Through role-playing scenarios and specific implementation examples, participants will apply a set of practical tools and protocols that are essential for the instructional coach.
Intended Audience : Teaching and Learning coaches, professional support staff, Teacher leader
Robert Bauer
Microsoft Teacher Academy: Ignite Learning and Collaboration for your Students
Office 365 offers a comprehensive suite of tools available for every student and teacher. Document collaboration is an important feature, but it just scratches the surface of Office 365. We keep the focus on how these tools allow persistent collaboration and productivity whenever and however it’s needed today. Web-based, totally collaborative, platform-agnostic, all shareable with distant audiences. A modern approach to communication & collaboration for all learners. We’ll be hands on and leave with examples and plans to benefit your students on Monday!
- Take a deep dive into modern storytelling using Sway. Find out how why teachers say it saves time. Leave with an understanding of how this tool supports shared, collaborative presentations and minimizes fuss over design.
- Quickly build rich formative assessments for each child using Forms. Share and collaborate with your colleagues & teams.
- OneNote Class Notebooks: find out why schools are turning to OneNote to liberate learning from a traditional learning management system.
- Provide support to EAL and dyslexic students with Microsoft Learning Tools. Free and built into Office 365. Learn how to use these with any students in your classes with learning differences
Warren Apel
Getting More out of Google’s G Suite
You’re at a “Google School,” sharing Docs and checking Gmail. But could you take that a step further? Together, we’ll do a deep dive into some lesser-known features of Google Drive. Everything you learn about Google’s tools will be immediately applicable to your classroom. You’ll find unexpected uses for Slides, powerful applications of Maps, and hidden features in Sheets. We’ll look at ways you can use Groups, Forms, and Sites with your students. And we’ll dig into YouTube and the Chrome browser to discover functions you never knew existed. You’ll learn some valuable software functions and technology skills, but it’s all framed in terms of classroom application for deep student thinking and meaningful learning.
Ben Sheridan
Empowering Agency: A SeeSaw Pilot Case Study (ES)
A scalable pilot is a low stakes way to implement and receive feedback on potential new or improved programs or procedures. At NIST, we realized blogs weren’t meeting the needs of our Elementary teachers, students, and parents so we set out to find a solution that better met these needs as well as aligned with our school’s beliefs around learning. Specifically the belief that students should be empowered to seamlessly document and share their learning as well as to give and receive timely feedback on this learning. We felt a pilot would be the best way to test possible solutions in a low stakes non invasive manner.
The beauty of this session is the outcomes are twofold. Firstly, the participants will learn how to build and implement a successful pilot focusing on some essential elements aimed at empowering your staff. Secondly, participants will take a deep dive into SeeSaw learning journal to learn why we felt it met the needs of our students, teachers, and parents.
Larry Ehnert
Learning Through Making: A Tinkering Exploration for the “Non-Design” Teacher (MS HS)
Is ‘making’ the new media for deeper learning? Maker tools allow students to engage in a type of learning where they identify their own problems and then create products and prototypes to solve the problem and build their own learning.
Come and find out more about the culture of making and why it is growing in classrooms around the world as MakerSpaces and FabLabs become part of the resources available to students. Spend the day playing, tinkering, making and exploring maker tools as provocations for how to find new, creative and innovative ways for learning? You may come come away with the beginnings of an artefact and ideas for how you can use ‘making’ in your classrooms to deepen student learning.
This session will be an introduction to computer controlled machines that allow students and teachers to engage in learning through methods not possible a few short years ago.
- We will have some short sessions on designing pieces using a range of manufacturing tools such as vinyl cutters, various 3D and UV printers, laser & plasma cutters and more. The processes for all these machines is very similar; so by the end of the day, you should have a basic comfort level with the tools.
- You may get to explore our low-cost arduino microcontrollers to make simple programmable devices which can be integrated into a variety of student projects.
- We will showcase many student projects from the first year of operation of the SAS Makerspace and discuss ideas to take back about what students could make in their own classrooms.
Amy Foley & James Linzel
Innovation Institute: Implementing Transdisciplinary Project-Based Learning (MS/HS/Admin)
Do you – or your students – ever wish that learning in school was more engaging and authentic? Do you question whether students are developing the skills they need to flourish in today’s world? This session will focus on one way to develop and implement a collaborative, transdisciplinary, project-based learning program that focuses on the 4 C’s (collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking) and design thinking. The session will take place in Shanghai American School’s Center for Innovation and Design, where participants will be able to observe and interact with students from the Innovation Institute (I2). During the second half of the session, participants will have the opportunity to differentiate their learning experience by choosing to either participate in a feedback protocol, further interact with I2 students, meet with subject specific Institute teachers, collaborate with other participants, or work with a team of colleagues.
Jamie Stevens
Make/Hack/Play/Learn Together (ES)
We have heard the buzz words around “Makerspace”, but what is the maker culture important? What does it look like in the elementary school? Why do schools have these spaces?
Creating a Maker culture in your school, classroom, or curriculum is not just for the tech savvy, but for anyone that wants to ignite creativity and while building stewardship and social interaction. For elementary teachers, any space can be a makerspace if used intentionally. Whether a whole room specifically devoted to being the makerspace or a part of your classroom. The goal is to get kids to collaboratively problem solve, build, test, fail, and redesign.
Learn about the logistics of building a Makerspace in your classroom. How do kids know what to do? How can you find out what they’re learning? How do you make time for that with all the other tasks crammed into the school day? And how do you keep the Makerspace from turning into a chaotic mess?
It will be a journey of making and exploring both the SAS Elementary Tinker Lab (dry space) and the Innovation Hub (messy space).
We will use the spaces and materials to remix an existing unit to bring in aspects of maker-centered learning? Are you looking for ways to build authentic, interactive, student driven, and open-ended learning experiences for students?