Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
Something about this book title and summer reading fits perfectly. The open ocean, pirates, and fierce independence. I’m hoping you have a bit of time to settle into some reading for fun and some that inspires you in the classroom to have students take on more leadership and develop their own independence.
We helped one of our partner schools, Wallingford Elementary in Wallingford, Vermont, get set up with screencasting for their MacBook-based 1:1 environment, and they taught us a ton about the tech tool decision-making process along the way.
So here, soup-to-nuts is a step-by-step tutorial for using Screencast-o-matic on the MacBook for recording screencasts for Google Site e-portfolios. With bonus screencast!
Continue reading “Screencast-o-matic on the Macbook”
In this episode, we talk with math educator and STEM Academy leader Lea Ann Smith about Essex High School’s STEM Academy and take a look inside a program that lets students pursue projects in medicine, engineering, computer science, mathematics or biology — by working with community partners during the school day.
Continue reading “Personalized STEM learning at Essex High School”
Digital badges have potential to serve as both markers of achievement and as a vehicle for those of us who assess students’ learning for a living to think differently about our current practices.
Many students do the work of examining their own learning through collecting artifacts, reflecting on evidence of learning, and displaying the results of that learning on their digital portfolios. As Act 77 in Vermont encourages us to open multiple avenues for learning opportunities, it also demands of us multiple ways for students to capture, reflect upon, and display their achievements.
Continue reading “Digital Display: add Credly badges to Google Sites”
As we work with schools who are piloting digital badge programs on the BadgeOS platform, we need to start thinking through what some options are for students to store, keep track of, and display the digital credentials they earn.
Free, online timeline tools allow students to break free of the traditional two-dimensional timeline and create highly customizable multimedia projects to showcase research, serve as digital portfolios, manage projects, guide gallery walks or form study guides.
And yes, they can also be used for book reports.
Half of the Tarrant Institute staff and a special guest headed to Nashville last week to present at the Association for Middle Level Education Annual Conference. We set out to share with middle grades educators from around the world the incredible, tech-rich teaching happening in Vermont schools. As we always conclude after visiting national conferences, Vermont really is on the cutting edge. Here’s a roundup of our presentations about learning management systems, authentic assessment and augmented reality.
Continue reading “Innovative learning shared at Nashville conference”
Back in November, a group of educators from Harwood Middle School, in Mooretown VT, headed down to the iPad Summit in Boston, to talk about how Harwood has revolutionized ePortfolios, by making their production part of graduation requirements. They’re asking students to document their artifacts using Evernote. Use of the app in this way allows each student to graduate with a fully annotated, personalized digital portfolio, demonstrating what they’ve learned and how it satisfies Harwood’s graduation requirements.
And if that’s not enough to entice you, there’s 8th grade science educator Brian Wagner dressed as the Wicked Witch from Snow White. FOR PEDAGOGY.
A 1-minute iPad how-to from Harwood Union Middle School science educator Brian Wagner, showing you how to save augmented reality “auras” from the popular mobile app Aurasma, to Evernote.
Wagner used Aurasma with his students this past spring in creating an augmented reality periodic table, mounted in the community gallery space at their school.