Summary of Dynamic Landscapes Ed Tech Conference 2014

Dynamic Landscapes 2014 was held this past Thursday and Friday at Champlain College.  DL is the annual spring Ed Tech conference co-sponsored by VITA-Learn (the state ed tech group) and VSLA (the librarians' association).  It always seems to come at a difficult time of year for people, so I'd love to figure out how we can get more teachers to attend next year-- but in the mean time, here are my notes and take-aways.

First off, as has become the norm for these conferences, most presenters include links and/or downloads to their session resources, so I encourage you to browse the schedule and click on a session of  interest to see what's available (as an example, I just clicked on "Using Technology for Personal Learning Plans" and found this helpful presentation).

Another way to attend a conference vicariously is through Twitter.  The image below shows just a few tweets during Joyce Valenza's keynote.  Note how the hashtag #vted (Vermont education) and her ID @joycevalenza are used to make them easy to find.

Here are the slides from the keynote

Unitentional FilmFest

More PowerPoint presentations from Joyce Valenza

OK, my big takeaways...

 If you haven't already experienced it, the Maker movement has blossomed in schools.  There was a "Maker room" at the conference that featured students showing projects they'd done (above) and giving participants an opportunity to look at and play with some tools, including a 3D printer and soft circuit projects.  One of the sessions I attended featured a class at South Burlington HS in which students dream up projects, then bring them to life.

I went a session where schools that had just undergone the SBAC field test reported out on what they learned from the experience.  Overall, it seems to have gone well on the tech side.  Obviously, the more students use technology on a regular basis, the more comfortable they are applying it in different settings.  Our own sophomores practiced on the Math SBAC test this past Thursday.  There will be practice tests next year leading up to the spring assessment.  More information will be available once the field tests have all been completed.

Personalized learning (including the aforementioned PLPs) was also a theme.  Although I wasn't at the session, I heard that Mt. Abraham UHS did an excellent job presenting the work they've done in this area.

I'll stop here, but please stop me if you'd like to chat about the conference some more.  Thanks for reading this far!