How students tell their PLP stories

Scaffolding PLPs so students understand them

providing support for goal-setting in a PLP5th and 6th graders from Fayston Elementary School took their personal learning plans (PLP) in extraordinary and unexpected directions this year. All because of trust, dedication, and team work by their teachers.

This livecast of a presentation at the Dynamic Landscapes conference exemplifies the approach. You will hear students presenting the nuts and bolts of the PLP process with ownership, eloquence, and insight. The attendant educators, Amy Jamieson and Jason Stevenson, provided behind the scenes scaffolding and support while making sure that students were front and center.

Continue reading “How students tell their PLP stories”

Will we see you at Dynamic Landscapes 2016?

Check out these dynamic educators

Dynamic Landscapes 2016Are you heading to sunny Burlington, VT this Monday and Tuesday (no really, it will be sunny and warm) for Vita-Learn’s Dynamic Landscapes? It’s a perfect opportunity to mix business with pleasure.

If so, check out our Tarrant Institute partner educators who are presenting! Feel free to store some of those ideas, haul them back to your classroom, and liven up these last few weeks of school!

What’s that you say? You haven’t created your conference schedule yet either? You do not have that sort of time to plan. Let us take care of that for you. Here’s your own personal schedule:

Continue reading “Will we see you at Dynamic Landscapes 2016?”

Ever wonder what 300 educator selfies looks like?

As part of the endnote for Dynamic Landscapes 2014, we asked 300 Vermont educators to take and share selfies.

And they did.

A huge thank you to everyone who turned out for the conference and played along with our bingotastic endnote. I made this video collage with Animoto on the iPad, and then when iTunes refused to play nicely because of Configurator, I switched to Animoto on a laptop. Platform-smash! Party!

Anyway, you guys are amazing! See you next year!

Tarrant Institute partners presenting at Dynamic Landscapes

Local educators and students presenting at Vermont state conference

“Do Make Create: Exploring Creative Ideas for the Classroom”

If you’re one of the many folks planning on attending Dynamic Landscapes 2014, the annual state-wide conference for Vermont’s education scene, be sure to check out these Edmunds and Essex students and educators! They’re presenting at this year’s conference.

Kathy Gallagher, Carole Renca and their students will be presenting “Creating a 21st Century School-wide Reading Community” Thursday at 1:30pm. They’ll be joined by Geoff Gevalt from the Young Writers Project.

Also Thursday morning are Eric Schoembs (Edmunds) and Dan Trenis (Lyman C. Hunt Middle School), presenting on “3D Printing:  Prototype, Products, and Processes”.

At the ARIS session, we'll be playing "Shape Invaders", a game of geometry and aliens created by GEMS technologist Angelique Fairbrother.
At the ARIS session, we’ll be playing “Shape Invaders”, a game of geometry and aliens created by GEMS technologist Angelique Fairbrother.

Friday morning, 6th grade math educator Laura Botte and her students will be presenting Project-Based Learning with ARIS: Engaging Students by Pairing Authentic Game Creation with Real-World Learning with BSD technologists Valerie Lodish, Kevin Grace and some of us from the Tarrant Institute. This is a hands-on session, so if you’re planning on attending, please bring a laptop, netbook or Chromebook if possible.

You can read more about the ARIS project here.

And Friday during the noon hour, students and facilitators from the Edge Academy at Essex Middle School will be talking “Engagement to Empowerment: Students at the Center of Change”. As we recently saw with the second full year of Edge’s Wild City Project, this is a truly effective and dynamic group of school game-changers. Do NOT miss this session.

Congratulations to both the educators and students for taking this opportunity to share their experiences at the state-wide level!