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”
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”
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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.
Tarrant Institute professional development coordinator Susan Hennessey discusses the current and future possibilities of digital badging, e-portfolios and alternative credentialing, with such tools as Badgestack and BadgeOS.
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.