VITA-Learn - Friday Strands in Detail

In this session you will be introduced to how a function of Microsoft Excel, Pivot Charts and Pivot Tables, has been used in Milton to provide an effective, low cost solution for using data to improve student achievement. In a time when it is important to find tools that can be easily used by districts, administrators, and teachers, here is one way that one district has been able to do it.

Join this presentation by the Vermont Department of Education concerning the ongoing development of two online tools: Teachers' Workplace (TWP) and Riverdeep Learning Village (RLV). TWP is an online Mentoring and Collaboration tool that has been piloted broadly in Vermont. It is being rolled out more broadly this fall. RLV is an educational resource clearinghouse that is being piloted now. It will become THE center for instructional and assessment resources for Vermont. Both tools will be available, free, to all active Vermont educators.

Send your students on a virtual class trip to China and beyond through a CultureQuest. In this session you will experience a China CultureQuest and learn how to easily create your own cultural adventure to any country. See how to provide a rich multi-cultural experience for your students through a student-centered, technology challenge. This model can be easily accommodated for other destinations and grade levels.

This workshop will give teachers an overview of how you can use technology to create an archive of your local history. Using various resources including local and state historical societies, research librarians, old newspapers, and online archives, we will discuss ways we help students find the answers to local history mysteries. You will also see some of the teaching tools we've created to support the third grade study of the history of Fair Haven and West Haven.

Taken a good look at the Andromeda Galaxy lately?~ How about photographing the stunning Orion Nebula some 1,500 light years from our pale blue planet.~~ Students take their pick from these celestial objects - or from the likes of star clusters, galaxies, planets, and even our Moon and Sun -~ to photograph, research, and present PowerPoint multimedia at "star parties".~ Following a brief iMovie presentation on the history of the

Learn how creative technologies can engage a variety of learners in high-level projects. Explore student-created examples of multimedia, video, imaging, and animation that showcase the power of authentic work with technology. Come explore a variety of student-created projects, including clay animation announcements, video biographies, and more. See how these projects were created and what resources are necessary. Discuss obstacles to implementation and learn strategies for integrating creative technology projects across subject areas and grade levels.

Using an inquiry-based approach to teaching everything from environmental sciences and mathematics to social studies and literature, participants will explore models created with STELLA Systems Thinking Software. See how Systems Thinking and STELLA software help to create environments whereby students can learn how things work by doing and seeing. STELLA models inspire the exciting "ah-ha" moments of learning by offering students the opportunity to as "what if" and watch what happens.

This session uses the lens of Doug Reeves, Vicki Bernhardt and other researchers to demonstrate the capacity for using data from the Common District Model (CDM) and the Education Data Warehouse (EDW). Local implementation of the CDM will be discussed as well as warehouse use during action planning.

Podcasting-a term combining the words IPod and Broadcasting-refers to a specific way for someone to create content and then to deliver that content as a broadcast. Others subscribe to the broadcast and receive new content when it is created. Recently, this technology has begun to offer new opportunities for educators to reach students. Teachers can create curriculum and send it directly to students' MP3 players.

Students can then listen to homework, assignments, lectures or notes at any time or place. We will be highlighting Podcasting and Blogging using Windows based programs. We will be sharing how we have used Podcasts in our K-8 school system. The Blogging tool we will focus on will be Classblogmeister. A middle school teacher has established a Blog for students to share their writing pieces. She will be sharing her experiences using it over the past 9 months. This workshop will touch on the basics of Podcasting and Blogging.

Students in Irasburg Vermont know a lot about whales! Join Sean as he walks you through a unit he did with 6^th and 7^th grade students on Whales. Students utilized the web and located video and audio clips as well as solid research on a variety of whales. Their mission was to learn as much as they could before going on a real Whale Watch off the coast of Massachusetts. The students developed multimedia presentations prior to their trip, then using a Webquest after their return put some inquiry-based learning to use in answering an essential question about the hunting of Bowhead whales. The students learned a lot, and Mr. Wallace learned even more. Share his experience in this informative presentation. Sean Wallace is involved in the Vermont One to One Computing project. Any classroom teacher can utilize his experience. Join him!

This workshop will focus on integrating TinkerPlots Database software into a middle grades writing program. “Writing to persuade” has long been a Vermont Portfolio assignment. Matt Lutz used his students’ complaints about getting too much homework as the springboard into a larger discussion about middle level students’ use of time. What evolved out of the discussions was a survey of 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade students at the Charlotte Central School. The data was entered into TinkerPlots and the resulting graphs were used to support student portfolio writing. It isn’t surprising that the original complaint about homework faded and many other aspects about students’ time use became the focus of the writing.

In this workshop, we will show how to use TinkerPlots and share our experiences with the software. We have been very impressed with the straight-forward design that gets students working with data quickly and easily. TinkerPlots helps fill the Vermont Technology Grade Expectation for students to learn to effectively use database software.

Japanese Knotweed is a bad, bad plant; more specifically, it is an exotic invasive plant species that crowds out native vegetation on riverbanks in Vermont. This presentation tells the story of how Main Street Middle School students learned to use GPS units and arcGIS software to survey Japanese Knotweed populations in Montpelier. During the project, students worked with Montpelier's planning office to create maps and with Montpelier's parks department to go out and stomp Knotweed. Students also raised public awareness with Knotweed raps, Knotweed podcasts, Knotweed teach-ins at other schools, and even a Knotweed cookbook.

~The use of ‘streaming’ digital video to support web-based learning resources is rapidly becoming an attractive and viable option for many within school systems.~ School systems are now utilizing the web as a medium to educate students and provide additional course materials to assist those students in need of additional help.~ This workshop will take you through the stages of developing and delivering online presentations or ‘virtual classes’ combining digital video, PowerPoint slides and other web elements.~ We will share many examples and discuss the different technologies being used in the classroom to create and deliver web based course materials.

In multiple content areas. This session will also include a tour of curriculum and assessments available at vt.vcat.us, the free public database maintained by Effective Assessment. All systems examined use the Vermont Comprehensive Assessment Tool (vcat.us) for curriculum delivery, data collection, and report generation.

NECAP, NCLB, VDC, AYP, CIRS, DRA, LCAP, POA, PASS, LEP, SES, IEP, and, for some of us, LSMFT...if you know what these are, you need to come to this workshop. Data mining, warehouses, student information systems, data teams, classroom assessment systems...how to make sense of it? In this session you will learn a framework for understanding data and data systems at a classroom, school, and supervisory union level. Includes recommendations from the 2006 Vermont DOE report, lessons from current readings, and practical steps you can implement.

Chittenden East Supervisory Union is developing a K – 12 technology curriculum that is systematic, integrated into the existing core curriculum via performance tasks and is accountable in an on-line database. Join us in discussing one district’s successes and tribulations of tackling its K - 8 technology curriculum development and integration, and the possibilities for its future 9 – 12 technology curriculum.

Using various technology tools (WebQuests, digital video cameras and editing software, digital sound recordings) 8^th graders at Hartford Memorial Middle School totally immersed themselves into the research and development of life in the 18_th century. As a final product they created 2-3 minute digital video of A Day in the Life of a Colonial American.~ The DVD included re-enactments of trades and lifestyles of the times.

Teresa Piette and Jeff Coburn will share strategies for integrating technology into the middle grades language arts classroom including an innovative use of Inspiration, Inspiration notebooks, and MSWord in the Writing Process. Teresa is also employing book discussions within a Moodle virtual classroom environment, and the use of multimedia presentations with her poetry students. While Teresa is one of the teachers currently involved in the Vermont One to One Computing Project, her experiences will show all teachers how to better utilize inquiry-based learning and web-based materials in any classroom.

The workshop will illustrate how the LOGO learning environment supports such diverse curriculum areas as writing, the visual arts, music, mathematics, computer science, simple and complex machines, and robotics, not to mention an authentic place to teach to the technology GEs. Young students as well as older students benefit from exploring LOGO. Using LOGO can be motivating for academically challenged students as well as academically gifted students. LOGO is a versatile educational tool in a constructivist teacher’s toolbox. LOGO can be a valuable part of a project-based classroom, or as a learning center, or as a means to differentiate instruction.

Pricing, policies, benefits, even the way software is deployed affect your budget, and your teachers' time and efforts. Which software includes work at home privileges (Microsoft has DIFFERENT policies in place- beware!), when is it better to jump to the next tier (example: once you need more than 82 licenses of Inspiration, buy 100...it's cheaper! - Symantec, Adobe, Macromedia, and many more publishers have similar licensing quirks. Which titles are compliant on OSX 10.1 - 10.4...these are 4 separate operating systems. Which publishers are addressing Rosetta and the intel Mac? How has

Microsoft Wizard and the new Mac operating system affected publisher's decisions. Expert guidance on licensing how tos and don'ts will be addressed. All this and MUCH more will be covered. A full description of programs compliant to the newest systems (and older ones as well) plus links for free product and downloads will be provided, CURRENT PROMOTIONS, as well as LOTS of full demo cds and handouts. Don't miss this very popular session. Come ready to ask questions, get expert advice, and leave feeling as if you're a bit wiser on a very tricky subject.

The best way to record music on a Mac is now the best way to record podcasts. Podcasting in GarageBand 3 puts you in the control room of your own full-featured radio station. And new iWeb integration gets your voice on the Internet in minutes.~ This session provides an in depth review of pod casting, focusing on making enhanced pod casts with i-life 06. We will also share some the innovative pod casts being produced in Vermont Schools.

In this workshop you will see an overview of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests currently used at all schools in the Southwest Supervisory Union. These tests are state-aligned, computerized, adaptive assessments that provide immediate, accurate and useful information to help guide targeted instructional planning.

With the advent of Online Social Networks, teaching safe Internet use has become a vital teaching responsibility for school. This presentation will offer resources, suggestions and hands-on activities for a developing an Internet safety unit for your students. We will look at several of the major Internet Safety curricula (iSafe, CyberSmart and others) and discuss implementing a broader, “Netiquette” program in school.

After surveying parents, it was clear that they felt less technologically-competent than their children, often weren’t familiar with Internet safety practices, and needed guidance in how to keep their kids safe online. In the second half of the program, we will discuss how school resources might help in this regard.~ Included here will be outstanding Internet safety links, controlling web software, advice on filtering and monitoring software, setting up a school website on safe web browsing, and conducting internet safety presentations for parents and the community.

Looking for an interesting way to teach Social Studies through technology?~ You will tour a unit that incorporates PowerPoint, a visual organizer, and an assessment piece.~~ You will be blown away by student creations of content-rich presentations using sound, animation, images and text.~ Examples of Fifth grade Black American and Civil War slide shows will be shared.~ We will discuss ways you can integrate technology into your Social Studies curriculum.

You and your students can create a simple (or sophisticated) databases using Appleworks that will allow you to search for a certain someone using evidence collected. This is a great partnership activity if your students have read The Westing Game or if you just wish to create a game of "Whodunit?" In this workshop participants will learn who create and define fields, store and sort records, and design a variety of layouts.

database activities can be used as effective tools in the foreign language classroom. We will explore how these tools can be used for instruction, reinforcement and assessment. Jim Daniels, a foreign language teacher involved in the Vermont One to One