Vermont Fest Recap

Last week, Mark Pogact and I attended the Vermont Fest ed tech conference. There were educators and "tech people" from all over Vermont and beyond. Here is the complete schedule (click through to see presenter materials). Here are some of the takeaways:

We attended a session with Peter Drescher on the new ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Standards for students. We looked at how these have evolved.  Great conversations about assessing these and how they fit with the CSSU Grad Standards.

There was a panel discussion on PLPs during lunch on Thursday.  Lots of schools grappling with these.

On Thursday afternoon, we attended Dan French's session on Open Education School Systems. We applied the Design Process of

1. Describe problem as design challenge
2. Brainstorm/empathize
3. Rapid prototyping
4. Iteration and refinement

to the context of PLP implementation. 

On Friday morning, I was in the Innovation Lounge, where we were demo-ing such things as 3D printing, green-screen video, and programming toy robots.  Mark attended a session on virtual learning. In the afternoon, we both attended an excellent session on Open Education Resources.  This really got me thinking about how we can utilize free and open resources in classes and for student-centered learning.

As usual, some of the best learning came from conversations with colleagues from other schools-- in the hallway, at the next table in a workshop, or at lunch.  

Mark and I would be happy to share more details on what we learned if you're interested.  Thanks for reading!